Consumers don’t subsidize the revenue of even a 30% of existing industries. If the payments were made to individuals then all of the companies that have Walmart as a customer would go down along with Walmart.
> we should take national ownership in the company if they want us to buy their debt.
Equity is equity and debt is debt. The two things are different and serve different purposes. There is no reason to take equity in a company when all the company wants is a loan.
In normal times with well-functioning markets and non-distressed players, that's so.
But with distressed (or small or less creditworthy) players or at distressed times, it's extremely common for lenders to demand equity as a concession for making a loan. See PIKs, warrant coverage, convertible notes, etc.
Walmart is in no sense distressed, and the Fed owns a microscopic amount of their debt, as part of an effort to create a broad market index of corporate debt.
Clearly. But it's not as if demanding equity rights along side a debt financing is unprecedented. Certainly, it is a damn sight more precedented than the Fed buying corporate bonds!
Consumers are already buying as much as they can from Walmart. There are shortages on items that are not being produced. Walmart is incurring on new debt because the upstream actors failed. It is a healthy business that will come back the moment the situation stabilizes.