[asdff]

In an economy driven mostly by consumer spending at the bottom, definitely the latter. This is almost a chicken and egg scenario, but not quite.

You can give a company money to hire people and make product X, but it doesn't do you any good if no one has money to buy product X, or most people see X as a luxury and are tightening belts. You can counter this by giving more companies money to hire more people, so that the workers at company producing Y have money to buy product X. Then it becomes difficult to determine what companies to prop up, and which to avoid. Inevitably, who gets propped up are the industry leaders, not the tiny players, and that sector consolidates and contracts.

A better approach would be to inject the money directly at the bottom. Let consumers make these picks on which companies are economically productive and should be supported, let the free market sort this out by adding liquidity at the consumer level. 70% of our global economy is driven by consumer spending, not by blue chips paying off their corporate debt.