Bitcoin Forum

The Coronavirus is already hitting major economies hard, and the worst is yet to come. Many businesses are going to get hit really badly. At the moment it is airlines and travel companies bearing the brunt of it, but this will extend throughout society as quarantines and restrictions go on with no end date in sight.

We are seeing the first indications of (re)nationalisation of some companies:
France ready to nationalise virus-stricken companies (https://www.ft.com/content/7eb398ac-6839-11ea-800d-da70cff6e4d3)
Spain has nationalised private hospitals (https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-spain-nationalises-private-hospitals-emergency-covid-19-lockdown-2020-3?r=US&IR=T)
Italy is renationalising an airline (https://www.arabnews.pk/node/1642616/business-economy)

Is this the start of a wide-ranging renationalisation program? Governments are attempting to inject cash and put other measures in place to prop up stricken companies, but it seems likely this will be difficult. Fundamentally, when there is a crisis such as this, private companies competing against one another are ill-equipped to maintain the day-to-day running of a country. It seems that government control is the only way to do it.

Thoughts?

I didn't know this was something that was so common out of the US, but I guess this is something that I'm going to have to talk about for a bit. I don't think this is going to happen in a place like the US, because it's not common for the US to control an entire company or industry.

Though I do know that for one of the companies here, it's not surprising to see, Alitalia. This was a rumor for the past couple years that this was happening, and a crisis like this, where airlines are hurting badly, is the perfect time to nationalize it.

I am going to stress that if that in any country this is typically going to be the last thing that a country is going to do, and it's only going to be done because the company in question employs a LARGE amount of people in the country. Give it a few years after this recession and the companies are going to be privatized again. It's a bit of a cycle I guess in the EU.

In the US we just pump money into certain companies -- think of the bailouts which saved GM, the bank, etc -- and then we get stock for it and then sell this. That's what we do here (commonly)

There is also in the US "Defense Priority" orders. When a private company is presented with such an order from the government, he must fill it first.

There are ways to control the private companies without formally nationalizing them.