Economics
An Ancient Computer Language Is Slowing America’s Giant Stimulus
- Unemployment systems run spaghetti code that’s hard to change
- Pandemic, economic shock expose shortage of COBOL programmers
Photographer: Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg
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The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed aging, inflexible computer systems at the heart of the U.S. economy -- and a shortage of experts to fix the problem. This is slowing the government’s effort to get billions of dollars in stimulus checks to millions of newly unemployed citizens.