Our actions, taken together, helped unlock more than $ trillion of funding to support businesses large and small, nonprofits, and state and local governments between April  and December of 2020. This, in turn, helped keep organizations from shuttering and put employers in a better position to keep workers on and to hire them back as the recovery continues.
Some entity has to be prepared to lend in such a situation if the market will not, otherwise the panic can imperil the institution concerned, and perhaps the financial system as well. 5 The notion has quite a history.