THE first JobKeeper payments are scheduled to appear in hundreds of thousands of corporate bank accounts in the coming week.
For those companies who have been forcibly shut or denuded of customers since the March shutdown began, the wage subsidy payments won't be a moment too soon.
Despite some tentative questioning about the retrospective nature of the scheme, criticisms of JobKeeper tended to be muted from the start, probably because even the staunchest of the Morrison government's opponents were taken aback by the sheer scale of the $130 billion program.
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As we are reporting, a snapshot of the regional economy appears to indicate that JobKeeper is fulfilling its aims.
The numbers of companies going into external administration - ordinarily expected to rise given the forced "hibernation" of the economy as part of our national COVID-19 suppression plan - are actually less than this time last year.
Still, the regulator ASIC warns that its figures are preliminary, and may change, given that the latest data is less than a fortnight old.
Most businesses - from large corporates through to family businesses and sole traders - are doing it tough.
On the other hand, changed habits during lockdown have been good for some operators.
A mini-boom for Newcastle's bicycle shops is one example.
Supermarket giant Coles reported a 13 per cent jump in sales for the three months to the end of March, and similar results are tipped for Woolworths.
Even so, prospering businesses are the exception to the rule when almost everything stops to allow this deadly virus to be brought under control.
Nothing can disguise the fact that local, national and global economies have taken a massive hit, with the worst almost certainly yet to come.
Certainly that's the view of insolvency practitioners. the undertakers of the corporate world.
Along with accountants and commercial law firms, they warn of a substantial increase in corporate collapses when Canberra's subsidies run out.
It would be encouraging to think they are wrong, but even if they are, the cost of keeping the economy afloat will be a substantial increase in debt - money that will have to be repaid, sooner or later.
If this is the cost of keeping Australia's coronavirus total to fewer than 7000 of the world's 2.15 million cases, most would say its a price worth paying.
ISSUE: 39,593.
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