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This is correct in hindsight. At the time, a lot of smart people were forecasting economic armageddon. Businesses screwed up too; big, well financed companies like Airbnb did massive layoffs. My superhost acquaintance went on to have her best year ever.

None of this excuses the lack of oversight, but the initial overreaction may have been rational.

Inflation related stimulus is of course farcical.

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I think the overreaction should not be viewed as "rational" from a hindsight perspective. Society should learn from its mistakes.

When you have a systemic shock with unknown impact, rational can still be ultimately wrong.

If there’s a 50% chance of total economic meltdown, and you can avert it with a few years of high inflation, that might still be the correct decision, even if the doomsday scenario doesn’t come true.

Not to mention that we'll never know for sure whether the doomsday scenario would have come true or not. So it might still have been a good response.

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