On this episode of Going Underground, we firstly speak to Dean Baker, the co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research and one of the first economists to predict the property market crash in 2008. He discusses the bailouts passed in the United States by Congress, how they have many giveaways to the richest in society, how the giveaways have nothing to do with the pandemic, why the coronavirus bailouts are worse than TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program), how state and local governments have been left out of the bailout, and why this will cause economic crises in the United States. He also explains the pointlessness of austerity for the last decade in the US and UK, and why high public debt is not as dangerous as commonly thought. Finally, we speak to an NHS oncologist who is on the frontline of the UK’s fight against Covid-19, Dr Aislinn Macklin-Doherty. She discusses her and her colleagues’ experience catching the coronavirus and how the virus likely passed to patients, the lack of adequate mass testing putting patients at risk, widely-reported PPE shortages in UK hospitals, the £60,000 government compensation for NHS doctors who have died fighting coronavirus, the impact of austerity on the health service, why she believes it is hypocritical of Boris Johnson’s Conservative government to join in clapping for the NHS, and more!
