The reasonable short notice caused the government to decide the lesser of evils: allow some abuse to help most, (un)fortunately this exposes the excesses. Booking.com "decided" to not take part in the second round three months later mainly due to the legal work being well enough established and in place to force the company to forgo any firing of people and any bonuses to executives.

Yes an error, but as always there is some nuance.

True, but there were way to to help very quickly while mitigating some risks, and some of this is probably philosophical, really.

If I give your company a 10mm check, or 10mm in payroll tax relief, it's the same to your bottom line. The latter goes a long way to making sure it's applied to keeping people employed if that's your actual goal (which may or may not be your stated goal).

Given the huge bonuses bailed-out bankers got in 2008, it would be criminally naive to assume that politicians didn't plan on this happening.

> The fact that the particular government didn't foresee this outcome is quite astonishing.

They 100% saw this coming which is why they killed oversight. Best way to get Congress to pass a free giveaway is to get them in on the fun.

There is a reason the Republican politicians in Congress voted to strip the measures of even normal oversight.

They did see it coming and in fact they were trying to increase inflation.

> The fact that the particular government didn't foresee this outcome is quite astonishing.

Charitable of you to think that this isn't by design.