Black businesses matter, but will they get fair share of Covid-19 aid money?

BY BARRINGTON M. SALMON CONTRIBUTING WRITER @BSALMONDC | LAST UPDATED: APR 7, 2020 - 12:04:57 AM

“The $2.2 trillion recovery relief plan is a down payment,” Mr. Morial told The Final Call. “In the best case scenario, it will offer two months relief for small business owners and four months relief for unemployed worker. There is a need for them to go back. We fought hard in discussions, along with the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), to ensure, for example that lending platforms would be open to non-profits, sole proprietors and mom and pop stores.”


Financial planner and wealth manager Ivory J. Johnson acknowledged that Covid-19 has shaken up U.S. businesses and hit Black customers hard.

“It’s having a tremendous effect,” he said. “Cash flow just stops. Ten percent retail, 10 percent of restaurants, 20 percent of the population just stopped. This is the end of the business cycle, we’re at peak employment where wages go up, corporate money gets squeezed and they fire Bob,” he explained.

“People didn’t have time to pivot. For Black business, access to capital may not be there and Black customers are going to be hit very hard. It’s going to be a challenge for all businesses. You have to figure what you need to do now.”

He characterized the relief package as, “keep the light on money,” likened the U.S. economy to a Ponzi scheme with the U.S. government printing money “out of thin air,” and said now that corporations—who are carrying between $4 trillion and $10 trillion worth of debt—face an economic reckoning, the realization is dawning that the way they’ve been doing business is untenable.

“They are now seeing that this isn’t sustainable,” said Mr. Johnson, who for the past two decades has helped families and small businesses create and protect wealth, and who has guided them to see the benefits of developing a financial game-plan. “Nobody ever shoots Santa. People don’t care and weren’t complaining when they were making money.”

Mr. Johnson said the Covid-19 pandemic merely accelerated what has been happening to the economy, just at a slower rate.

“Here’s the reality: what happened is that they are creating money out of thin air, buying assets, feeding the Ponzi scheme,” he said. “They were rigging earnings, strip-mining stocks and buying back stocks, while the Federal Reserve pushed down interest rates and have been buying bonds and assets.”

Mr. Johnson, who founded Delancey Wealth Management. LLC in 2012, said 35 percent of small businesses couldn’t sustain a three-month shutdown, while 70 percent wouldn’t survive past six months.

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