Maher: We’re Spending Like ‘We’ll Never Run out of Cash’

On Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” host Bill Maher said that with the amount of money the U.S. is spending on coronavirus relief, “it feels like we’re back in that headspace that we’ll never run out of cash as long as the Fed doesn’t run out of ink.”

Maher said, “If we’re going to have a new roaring ’20s, let’s not repeat the mistakes of the last one. I keep reading that America is poised for a roaring ’20s, 21st-century edition, a repeat of that decade a century ago, when, just like now, the United States emerged from a pandemic ready to party as if there was cocaine in the Coca-Cola, which there was.”

He later added, “And looking at the economic factors right now, it feels like we’re back in that headspace that we’ll never run out of cash as long as the Fed doesn’t run out of ink. I’m just saying, if we’re going to do a new roaring ’20s, let’s do it this time without the two things that made the last one suck: Prohibition and the depression at the end of it. … [I]t does seem like the market is a little divorced from reality these days. It’s odd that the real economy has been full of news of unemployment, bankruptcies, and going out of business signs since COVID hit, and yet the S&P is up 76% in that time. It can’t go on forever.”

Maher then contrasted the amount of spending to get out of the Great Depression, the late-2000s recession, and fighting World War II to the amount spent on coronavirus relief and said, “The way we’re handing out money, you would think it had an expiration date on it.”

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