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I don't know much about economics but I do wonder why governments don't finance companies during crises by buying shares, and subsequently recoup our taxes buy selling them in times of prosperity. The UK government did this for the banks in 2008 but have recently been selling shares below market price. Is it corruption or is something you else at play?

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FWIW, Germany bought 25% of Lufthansa for 9 billion EUR in summer 2020[0] amid the Covid-19 losses, while the market capitalization was less than 4 billion. So they paid more than double the market capitalization to get a quarter of the company.

[0] https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/unternehmen/coronakrise-re...

Because companies would rather lay people off than sell shares.

Rationally, I think that governments should be ok with that as they will pay either way through unemployment or these rescue packages (at least with some industries where no critical supply chains are ripped out), but there would be enormous political pressure to stem job losses.

"Rationally, I think that governments should be ok with that as they will pay either way through unemployment or these rescue packages"

You are wrong here. The 3rd option is to take money from the investors. The example given in this thread, Lufthansa, the stock holders should have been wiped out. It is called risk.

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