The Republican National Convention has featured several small business owners thanking the Trump administration for the Paycheck Protection Program — a part of the CARES Act, passed by Congress back in March, that gave businesses grants to keep people on staff.
That's all well and good. But the PPP program, as well as the much larger and better-targeted boost to unemployment benefits, expired almost a month ago. Private datasets show the amount of spending on unemployment debit cards (where most benefits are deposited) has collapsed over the last month or so. Roughly $15 billion in weekly income has been deleted from the economy. It is very likely that the economy is either going to stall out roughly where it is now, or even deteriorate further.
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