[legion]

But they didn't have any excess inventory. They'd largely idled their factories, laid off staff, and sold off whatever inventory they had unintentionally stockpiled with deep discounts.

We have quite a few manufacturers in western Illinois (Armalite, Rock River Arms, for example) and they were HURTING. They were adjusting to what they saw as permanently lower demand. I don't think any were in danger of going out of business (yet), but they knew their operations had to scale back. Rock River Arms was producing a fraction of what they could produce in one shift. Since the beginning of the year, they've been running three shifts (24 hours a day).

The problem with conspiracy theories is that they require large numbers of people to keep their mouths shut forever to work. In the real world, eventually someone always wants to brag that they know the inside story, and in modern times with instant gratification, it can sometimes only be hours before someone opens their mouth. If you look back through history at the great unsolved mysteries (and I'm not talking about the ones old enough that the cultural context is a mystery as well), like Jack the Ripper or the Zodiac killings, they were probably committed by one person who kept his secrets to himself. As soon as a second person is involved, someone eventually wants credit.