Bitcoin supporter Palihapitiya goes viral on Twitter: no financial bailout for the wealthy

With over seven million views, 45.000 likes and 16.000 retweets, a viral clip on Twitter shows Chamath Palihapitiya, founder and CEO of the venture capital firm Social Capital, who denounces the bailouts for billionaires and hedge funds.

An appeal to give funds to ordinary people, not to hedge funds

The former Facebook executive ed investor in Bitcoin, which has a net worth of approximately $ 1 billion and has nicknamed the main cryptocurrency Bitcoin "schmuck insurance", claims that the US government should directly support individual Americans by giving them higher payments instead of channeling into the emergency funds huge and incentive packages to save the rich.

In a new interview on CNBC's Fast Money Halftime Report, Palihapitiya, who is also the president of Virgin Galactic, says that ordinary Americans are the ones who will pay the worst consequences of the current economic crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

But it is the wealthy CEOs and corporate board members who receive billions of public aid. Among the Fed's efforts to pump around $ 2,3 trillion into the economy through loans to licensed companies, Palihapitiya says the main beneficiaries will include hedge funds that will not feel the chain effect of the crisis at all.

“We are talking about a hedge fund that serves a lot of billionaire family offices. Who cares? Let the crisis hit them. Who cares? Don't they spend the summer in the Hamptons? Who cares?"

80% of the global workforce faces adjustments due to business closures

Palihapitiya also pointed to the growing number of unemployment claims in the United States this week, which increased by another 6 million to reach an estimated total of nearly 17 million people who have applied for benefits since the start of the economic fallout induced by the pandemic. .

This large group of workers joins those worldwide who have lost their jobs, as more than 80% of the global workforce faces the adjustments due to the closure of businesses, according to the International Labor Organization.

An invitation not to repeat the mistakes made in 2008

Palihapitiya argues that it makes sense to let airlines go bankrupt because they are underperforming. He adds, "What we have done is disproportionately support CEOs and poor boards of directors" while the idea supported by Palihapitiya is that they are left at the mercy of the economic crisis.

The venture capitalist said in a previous interview with CNBC host Scott Wapner that the government must act differently this time and stop the bailouts. “You cannot simply save people from financial decline because you are financially greedy.

It's not right. And what we did in 2008 was incomplete. All we did was ride the risk of an off-balance ship ... This time we have to let them come out of their own way. "