[ocdtrekkie]

I think what's really crazy here is that Booking.com would rather lose €65M than not pay executives €28M in bonuses (for a total loss to corporate coffers of... €93M?).

Sure, state aid is "for the employees", but in most of these cases: The company obviously could've paid them anyways, since they had this much spare compensation for their rich executives, and that the company continued to benefit from the labor of employees that the government was paying the salaries for.

The government, and by proxy, the taxpayers, end up doubly screwed over, while the corporation gets to continue to enrich itself, and enrich its executives, who are already wealthy.

Rather than give corporations huge blank checks, governments should've sent that money directly to individuals, and allowed corporations to fail or not as per usual. Most of these companies would still exist anyways, since they have plenty of money.