[sbashyal]

I disagree that nothing one could have done beforehand could fix that. The argument is not that there would not be a decline in share prices at all but the magnitude of it.

You need to have enough saved to survive 6 months w/o income is preached a lot in personal finance and somehow this is not practiced for businesses.It is understandable that cash-strapped startups can't afford to do this but the companies buying back shares to increase their stock price certainly could.

[solidasparagus]

Massive publicly traded companies are not the companies that are collapsing. It's mostly small business that aren't publicly traded let alone doing buybacks.

[psfollow]

But somehow, when all is said and done, companies like Boeing will not even face any consequence for their bad decisions.

When times are good, these companies divvy up the profits to give large bonuses.

When times are bad, they divvy up the bailout money to give smaller bonuses.

It certainly seems like there is no connection between compensation and performance once you are too big to fail.

And there is a very convenient "heads I win, tails you lose" structure in favor of the large companies.

[Anon1096]

This is an article about small businesses, which make up the backbone of the economy. It makes 0 financial sense to save up 6 months of savings for any company, big or small. This is literally a once-a-century event.

[scep12]

Doesn't mean it will be a century until the next one. There are other reasons to require business to have emergency funds... Weather comes to mind