3 ms·

Pandemic insurance? Lack of customers insurance? Do they sell that?

• adventured 7y ago
  No, there was no insurance you can buy for this scenario that will cover $30, $50, $100 billion in accumulated losses if you're eg Delta Airlines. There are no insurance companies that can afford that or that would back it, including Berkshire Hathaway (and they're among the only ones that could even attempt it). If you tried it, you'd just take down the entire insurance industry again as they suddenly might have to eat $100 billion in losses across the segment in one year, paying out epic cash that nobody outside of Apple, Microsoft and Google have to pay out. This is exactly the scenario where you should socialize losses across the giant government with the Fed's printing press and balance sheet, and simultaneously also ensure the government and its taxpayers get a fair deal (the airlines have to pay it back, and or taxpayers get the equity which can be sold off and receive dividends over time; all the US airlines were worth maybe $90 billion prior to the crash, producing like $18b in operating profit per year).
• foldr 7y ago
  I don't know. If they don't, or if it's unaffordable, then that means that a lot of "private" businesses are actually implicitly backed by public money. Something to bear in mind the next time these companies complain about government interference, or libertarian types complain about paying taxes. Most likely, the price of flights would be an order of magnitude greater if airlines weren't (through various direct and indirect means) publicly subsidised.