> No business is going to hoard 50 billion dollars in an emergency fund for a pandemic that cuts 90% of revenue, that's just absurd. That just isn't right, for

> No business is going to hoard 50 billion dollars in an emergency fund for a pandemic that cuts 90% of revenue, that's just absurd. That just isn't right, for a number of reasons. First, the 50 billion applies to the entire industry, so the "emergency fund" of an individual company is going to be much smaller. Imagining an airline holding 1 billion in a buffer, rather than using it for stock buybacks, isn't that far-stretched. Second, 90% loss of revenue isn't the problem, it's how long this revenue stays down that is the problem. The FAA closing the skies for a week should not be a problem, a month is going to be a huge problem, and a quarter might already be fatal. Third, preparing for such scenarios is commonplace in the financial industry, for example. (I have a sibling comment regarding that). Banks are now expected to be resilient enough to survive another another 2008-like crisis on their own, without taxpayer-funded bailouts. And these expectations are not merely high-level, there are entire hordes of specialists, both in banks and with regulators, that do nothing else other than model various scenarios.