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> But what's the timeline for gauging efficiency? Any company needing a public bailout even though they had sufficient profit to cover the issue is manifestly n
by chrischen 7y ago
> But what's the timeline for gauging efficiency? Any company needing a public bailout even though they had sufficient profit to cover the issue is manifestly not operating very efficiently.
By your definition any company that didn't see the coronavirus pandemic coming would be not operating efficiently, but the reality is even if your company was operating efficiently your company may be killed by it.
That's like saying a healthy person shouldn't need to be put on a ventilator because if they took care of their body well they wouldn't need it, but the reality is this virus is not something anyone could have prepared for.
- danaris 7y agoIt is not at all out of line to say "the airlines should not have spent $45B (or whatever the amount was) on stock buybacks, they should have saved a reasonable amount in anticipation of the next crisis" even if this particular crisis is much worse than anyone would have been able to anticipate a year ago. Even if they had only kept, say, $20B of that money—reducing their buybacks by less than half—that would surely be $20B they would not now be asking us taxpayers to spot them, and it's possible they would even be able to make a different kind of plan using that $20B to stretch them over at least some significant part of the gap.