[Exmoor]

Not really shocking, actually. The total turnaround time on the bailout bill was, what, a week and a half? Writing laws is complicated. I doubt anyone would be shocked if a large company cobbled together a hugely fairly complicated piece of software in two weeks and it turned out to have some major bugs. Writing a law like this is a bit like that, except with the additional downside that you can't really do any testing before release and you have people being paid to leverage the program for their own interests.

I actually heard and interesting interview [0] with one of the people in charge of the 2008 bailouts. He said the lessons learned were essentially don't worry about being too aggressive and don't worry about spending time trying to engineer a law that will target exactly who you feel like you should target. The most important thing is speed.

[0]: https://www.npr.org/transcripts/818583204

[Leherenn]

In line with your comment, I would say the biggest issue here is not that some companies that probably shouldn't have received the funds did. It's that a lot that should have didn't.

Of course though, given limited resources the 2 are correlated.

[salawat]

I actually think you need to flip that around a bit.

Instead of >the biggest issue here is not that some companies that probably shouldn't have received the funds did. It's that a lot that should have didn't. Try >the biggest issue here is that some companies that probably shouldn't have attempted to receive the funds did; causing a lot that should have to not.

There was a clear prioritization screw up in this whole boondoggle.