The fossil fuel industry has been chomping at the bit to seize the economic crisis brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic as an opportunity to solve their pre-existing financial woes - and to no one’s surprise, Donald Trump and his administration are racing to help them do it. At a time when the federal government can’t seem to get it together to help nurses and doctors get the basic protective gear they need, this is deeply infuriating.
Changes to the Main Street Lending Program announced today by the Fed mirror precisely those lobbied for by the fossil fuel industry and its cheerleaders in Congress. This lending program, funded at least in part by money allocated under the CARES Act, is designed to help financially sound small businesses recover from the COVID-19-induced economic crisis. What it wasn’t intended to do? Bail out an industry that has been facing decreasing returns and increasing debt for more than the past decade.
The Sierra Club and our partners, along with Congressional Democrats, have been raising the alarm bells in recent weeks about the potential for the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department to misuse American taxpayers’ relief funding on failing fossil fuel companies. We have said from the start that relieving the long-standing debt burden of fossil fuel companies would only be throwing good money after bad, while doing nothing to help protect workers and communities.
Read more at https://www.sierraclub.org/articles/2020/04/fossil-fuel-industry-gets-its-wishlist-federal-loan-program-changes
Read more at https://www.sierraclub.org/articles/2020/04/fossil-fuel-industry-gets-its-wishlist-federal-loan-program-changes
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