Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

Intervening to stop a financial free fall is a good idea because lots of blameless people pay the price for that free fall and the chaos that comes with it isn't justifiable when our government is capable of stopping it. How the clean-up is managed says more about what we value and the righteousness of the cause.

The grants/loans is a bit of a false dichotomy. As I understand it, many of the small business "loans" don't have to be repaid; grants by another name.

A financial crisis like this one isn't the "fault" of the "business community," nor those they employ, nor those who profit from/support them, e.g., the myriad smaller businesses that they and their employees rely on or buy from.

We do not live in a simple, barter economy. We live in an interconnected and complex economy. The idea that the "free market" will solve all ills isn't fundamentally wrong, but it misunderstands how the free market solves those ills.

The guillotine was the free market at work in France. Communism was the free market at work in czarist Russia. The Nazis were the free market at work in Germany. Slavery was the free market at work in the colonies and United States. Those are versions of the free market I would prefer to avoid, if possible.

I mean, are you referring specifically to what's happening RIGHT NOW?

Seems a little harsh to judge a business as a failure, when the government has forcibly shut it down, don't you think?

I agree with your last part. 

But Boeing, GE, and American were in major trouble before any of this happened. Especially GE & Boeing. I’m afraid they’ll be using this as an excuse to get a bailout- when they might’ve needed it regardless of this happening. 

And as far as the airlines go, over the last 9 years the 5 largest airlines combined exhausted 96% of their free cash flow on stock repurchases. That is just terrible management. And why did those executive teams do that? They did it for one reason and one reason only- to pump the stock price up to juice their own compensation up. 

So, coronavirus?

Lots of government policy being discussed here. I think there might be a spot for that around here.

The employees wouldn't notice being unemployed?

I think it would be devastating.  I'm sure others think otherwise.

Restaurants nearly always are on the edge, all of them, other than major national chains.

Large companies don't want to retain a large cash position for obvious reasons.

I've been in the restaurant business (to a slight degree) and it's rough.  My guess is around here we'll lose at least half our restaurants, probably more.  The workers are taking the brunt of it.

Just for the record, my thoughts about bailing out the businesses that are "too big to let fail" were in the context of the 2008 "crisis," not this one.

Our local wine bar is struggling. We've been trying to give them as much business as we can (buying bottles and charcuterie carry out since we can't go in there and drink). They have a wine club (2 bottles from various wineries curated by them, 3 times a year), and when my wife was in there last Friday she chatted with one of the owners who said that they might not have been able to survive long without the wine club profits as our most recent shipment was just made available. 

I could do without most of our local restaurants, but if the wine club closes, we'll be extremely sad. That was where I proposed. That was where we were legally married. It's been a big part of our romantic lives ever since we met. 

So I'm trying to do what I can to increase my business there, even beyond what we normally would do.