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I would add * Is the business important to society as a whole In my opinion, bailouts aren't about if a company "deserves" to survive, they are about if it's

• nopzor 7y ago
  who is the judge of what businesses are important to society?
• LatteLazy 7y ago
  I disagree, but I wrote my comment without explaining why the above should (I think) be the only criteria. Industries will survive and return to normal if they're economically viable, whether they are socially important or not. Cruise ships are (imho) floating cess pits that contribute nothing but pollution to our world. So we can just let them go bankrupt right? And they will. Then some billionaires will buy up the ships at auction for cheap, and reopen the same businesses under new names. They will make a killing for nothing more than being in the right place with a billion dollars. The number of ships and shittiness of the industry will not change. Maybe some mom-and-pop shareholders will get wiped out. And we will have missed the opportunity to make a fat profit for tax payers. That's what's happening here: the bailout will happen either way. But if the state leads it, the state gets the guaranteed profit. Now is a time to look at the benefit to our countries, not to moralise and let others privatise those benefits just because they're already rich.