After Deploying Almost $9 Trillion, Crisis Fighters Face New Dilemmas
Central bankers used to bail out financial institutions. During the pandemic, they’ve given money to a motley cast of unlikely beneficiaries. Will it ever end?
First responders: Powell, Lagarde, Kuroda
Illustrator: Patrick Leger for Bloomberg Markets
When Tottenham Hotspur striker Son Heung-Min put the ball in the back of the net early in the second half against Crystal Palace in April of last year, he etched his name into history as the first player to score at his soccer club’s glistening new 62,000-seat north London home. Less than a year after his team’s triumphant 2-0 win that day, the £1 billion ($1.3 billion) stadium sat eerily empty as a coronavirus lockdown brought sports, and much of normal life, to a halt across the U.K.
Then came another milestone. In June, Spurs became the first club in the English Premier League to qualify for Bank of England support. It tapped a £175 million commercial-paper facility to help cushion the estimated loss of more than £200 million in revenue from canceled matches and other events between then and June 2021