The helicopters are being warmed up – we might be closer to a bottom than you think

Governments are starting to act to bolster their economies against coronavirus. But, asks John Stepek, will throwing money at the problem slow the market crash?

France's Emmanuel Macron has vowed that no business will go bust © Getty

“No company, of any size, will be allowed to go bankrupt.” That was French president Emmanuel Macron last night, as he declared war on the coronavirus.

Back in 2012, European Central Bank boss Mario Draghi managed to stop the eurozone rot by declaring he would do “whatever it takes” to protect the euro. Will Macron’s quote go down as the “whatever it takes” moment of this crisis? I don’t know. But it certainly marks a radical shift. Last time, we just underwrote the banking system. Now we’re in a world where the government is promising to underwrite the entire economy.

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John Stepek

John Stepek is a senior reporter at Bloomberg News and a former editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He graduated from Strathclyde University with a degree in psychology in 1996 and has always been fascinated by the gap between the way the market works in theory and the way it works in practice, and by how our deep-rooted instincts work against our best interests as investors.

He started out in journalism by writing articles about the specific business challenges facing family firms. In 2003, he took a job on the finance desk of Teletext, where he spent two years covering the markets and breaking financial news.

His work has been published in Families in Business, Shares magazine, Spear's Magazine, The Sunday Times, and The Spectator among others. He has also appeared as an expert commentator on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, BBC Radio Scotland, Newsnight, Daily Politics and Bloomberg. His first book, on contrarian investing, The Sceptical Investor, was released in March 2019. You can follow John on Twitter at @john_stepek.