Analysis | Washington Is About to Pick Which Companies Survive

Two ugly truths about any epic economic crisis are that not all businesses will survive, and government interventions help determine which businesses will survive.

As coronavirus crushes the economy, Washington policymakers are scrambling to figure out who to bail out, a responsibility that one veteran of the 2008 financial rescue morbidly but accurately compared to the frantic triage work that doctors are currently doing in overcrowded Italian hospitals. They don't want to waste precious resources on patients who can't be saved, or on patients who can recover without their help. They know they can't prevent all deaths, but they want to prevent the preventable deaths.

"You have to decide who you can bridge through this," he said.