Key insights:
- The U.S. has bailed out companies before the coronavirus crisis, but never with such urgency.
- Bailouts are a mixed bag of success and failure—in one case, they created Amtrak.
- The value of the 1979 bailout of Chrysler is still up for debate.
- The 2008 rescue of the big banks gave bailouts a bad rap, and it stuck.
At some point, likely in the next day or two, the United States Congress will send the biggest economic stimulus bill in American history to the president’s desk—a comprehensive aid package worth $1.8 trillion and a “wartime level of investment in our nation,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said in the early hours of Wednesday.
