Letters | Coronavirus crisis: the world’s rich look after themselves, stimulus packages to weather pandemic will be no different

Those who meet for the annual financial gabfest in Davos, Switzerland, bailed themselves out after the global financial crisis of 2008 with trillions in public money, and are in the process of repeating the greed grab during the Covid-19 crisis.

They have the ear of politicians and convinced them to pour trillions of dollars into “stimulating” the economy.

Financial assistance for the unemployed is necessary, but help for big businesses is hard to justify. The US$500 billion budgeted for them in the recent US Congressional package could be better spent on the health care industry: necessary equipment for medical care responders, research on vaccines, strengthening the small and rural clinics and hospitals that have been closed as a result of the 10-year assault on the Affordable Care Act.  

Elites have promises made to rehire laid off workers, to maintain health and pension obligations, to “invest” in the business when the virus has been conquered. But if the post-2008 history and the behaviour after massive tax cuts of 2018-19 are any guide, there could just as predictably be borrowings at zero per cent interest rates to buy back stock, to close subsidiaries negatively impacted by lingering, lasting “social distancing”, to realign global supply chains away from the maligned China to even lower-cost, third-world “emerging markets”.