"This is incompetence and negligence from the financial elite governing our nation."
Wrong.
This was a deliberate and planned response to protect their true stake holders from the liquidity crunch that COVID lockdowns almost unleashed. Asset owners. For all intents and purposes it worked extremelly well.
Nothing incompetent about it. This is moral hazard in action and has been the bull case for some time now. Fundamentals don't matter anymore because anytime the market gets rickety its been a safe bet that either the Fed will swoop in with more QE and low interest rates or the federal government will issue more bailouts.