Today on the Brief:

• A followup on Tesla, corporate earnings and PayPal’s crypto ambitions
• New COVID-19 shutdowns in California 
• Small businesses on the brink 

Our main conversation:

Bloomberg has reported recently bankrupt companies including J.C. Penney and Hertz had provided executives with more than $131,000,000 in bonuses. 

On this episode of The Breakdown, NLW examines:

• The logic behind these bonuses
• Why that logic is stupid 
• How this sort of reward for personal failure in the wake of 2008 led to the rise of populism on the right and left 
• Why we should allow companies to fail 
• Why people’s sense that the system is a crony system isn’t wrong