Bailout

A bailout is a colloquial term for giving financial support to a company or country which faces serious financial difficulty or bankruptcy. It may also be used to allow a failing entity to fail gracefully without spreading contagion. A bailout can, but does not necessarily, avoid an insolvency process.

The term is maritime in origin being the act of removing water from a sinking vessel using a smaller bucket. A bailout differs from the term bail-in (coined in the 2010s) under which the bondholders and/or depositors of global systemically important financial institutions (G-SIFIs) are forced to participate in the process, but taxpayers supposedly are not. Some governments have the power to participate in the insolvency process: for instance, the U.S. government intervened in the General Motors bailout of 2009-2013.

Overview

A bailout could be done for mere profit, as when a predatory investor resurrects a floundering company by buying its shares at fire-sale prices; for social improvement, as when, hypothetically speaking, a wealthy philanthropist reinvents an unprofitable fast food company into a non-profit food distribution network; or the bailout of a company might be seen as a necessity in order to prevent greater, socioeconomic failures: For example, the U.S. government assumes transportation to be the backbone of America's general economic fluency, which maintains the nation's geopolitical power. As such, it is the policy of the U.S. government to protect the biggest American companies responsible for transportation (airliners, petrol companies, etc.) from failure through subsidies and low-interest loans. These companies, among others, are deemed "too big to fail" because their goods and services are considered by the government to be constant universal necessities in maintaining the nation's welfare and often, indirectly, its security.