The IMF has been reading my mind! https://blogs.imf.org/2020/04/01/economic-policies-for-the-covid-19-war/

We are in a very unusual economic situation, which has been likened, not to a war mobilization but to a demobilization—a controlled shutdown of all but the most essential sectors of the economy.

If this is a shutdown for a protracted period, very large numbers of businesses will go to the wall unless something is done.

And waiting in the wings, like the Great White Shark in Jaws, is predatory capital, private equity, that will be looking to acquire these businesses for pennies on the dollar.

It will be a massive shift in ownership—upwards. A funneling of wealth to the top elites.

And so we must find a way to block this. Employee ownership conversions are not an option—sticking workers with lemons in a controlled economic shutdown. It’s not viable.

We need to mothball these companies in some fashion until we pass through the public health crisis phase of the pandemic and are out the other end, when the economy will be re-floated and the stimulus kicks in.

What we need is something like FDR’s Reconstruction Finance Corporation, large-scale public holding companies that can acquire failing businesses until the point when they can be re-launched as part of the economic recovery, ideally on the basis of employee ownership or similar.

Otherwise, this will be a bloodbath, a feeding frenzy, resulting in a massive concentration of ownership. Trump warned as much when he said restaurants would open again ... but maybe not under the same owners.

The shark of private equity is out there, waiting. Don’t say you weren’t warned!