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Stimulus intended to help coronavirus-ravaged small businesses instead rewarding hedge funds, brokerages

  

Category:  News & Politics

Via:  citizen-kane-473667  •  4 years ago  •  23 comments

Stimulus intended to help coronavirus-ravaged small businesses instead rewarding hedge funds, brokerages
Officials at several large banks are concerned about the potential for class warfare

Not a bit surprised that  these assholes found a way to steal money from Main Street!






S E E D E D   C O N T E N T



When the chief executive of a midsized bank was briefed on the status of small-business loans being made under the federal government's coronavirus stimulus plan, he nearly hit the roof.

The bank was receiving applications not just from those barely solvent mom-and-pop businesses like restaurants , salons and family-run factories shuttered amid the nationwide pandemic shutdown that the legislation was supposed to help.

Flowing into his system were applications from businesses no one would consider small, or even barely solvent: Midsized hedge funds, brokerage businesses, small law firms, all outfits that are making money, much of it through fee income, and many operating remotely almost as if nothing had changed.

How could this be? What the banker discovered was that with less than 500  employees , financial firms and other high-end businesses are technically qualified for low-interest federally guaranteed loans under the broad parameters of the government's Payroll Protection Program (PPP).

And many were sending applications to his bank for the cash, as much as $10 million in the form of a forgivable loan, even if these weren't the types of small businesses Washington was looking to aid.

Even worse, the hedge funds and brokerage businesses were in effect taking money that should be earmarked for businesses that can barely survive in a time of social distancing and quarantines.

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Citizen Kane-473667
Professor Participates
1  seeder  Citizen Kane-473667    4 years ago
“What's going to happen is a class divide we haven't seen in years," the banker told FOX Business. "Remember Occupy Wall Street?" he asked, referring to the sometimes violent protest movement after the 2008 financial collapse and bank bailouts. "These protests will be bigger and more violent because the economic problems are worse and the disparity of the money is favoring Wall Street even more."

Not saying they would deserve it--but they deserve it!

 
 
 
Citizen Kane-473667
Professor Participates
2  seeder  Citizen Kane-473667    4 years ago

I can almost hear the lame-ass excuses being thought up even now to deflect the much deserved criticism they will be getting for this shit!

 
 
 
Kavika
Professor Principal
3  Kavika     4 years ago

This shouldn't shock anyone. Total FUBAR

 
 
 
JohnRussell
Professor Principal
4  JohnRussell    4 years ago

Stephanie Ruhle of NBC is a financial news reporter as well as an MSNBC show host. In the past few days she has been talking a lot about abuse of these small business loans.  Say a rich person owns a real nice yacht. Because they dont use the yacht 52 weeks a year, they rent it out occasionally during the year, including the services of the crew.  That rich person is a "small business" and eligible for the loan. He likely has a relationship with a bank that helped him to the front of the list. 

Greed is not good. 

 
 
 
Kavika
Professor Principal
5  Kavika     4 years ago

What really pisses me off is the fact that so many small businesses and individuals did and are doing all they can to help and support our front line workers. From the small glove manufacturer in Church Rock AZ working 24/7 and sending out their glove and not demanding payment upfront. The small tribal community college in MI answering the call and making 3,000 face shields for the front line workers. The Vietnamese donating all their supplies from the beauty shops to health care workers and then sewing masks for the workers. The thousands of citizens making masks at home for health care workers. The guy that owns some Subway Sandwich shops donating 5,000 subways to the hospital workers. The list goes on and on.

This is the true American spirit not these POS on Wall Street using the money that should be going to small businesses for their own use. 

Fuck the Wall Street assholes.

 
 
 
JohnRussell
Professor Principal
5.1  JohnRussell  replied to  Kavika @5    4 years ago

"Financiers" will never care about America. They care about how much money they can skim off the US economy.  If hedge funds did not exist the world would be no different, for the worse, at all. 

hedge fund
[hedge fund]
NOUN
hedge funds (plural noun)
  1. a limited partnership of investors that uses high risk methods, such as investing with borrowed money, in hopes of realizing large capital gains.
 
 
 
JohnRussell
Professor Principal
5.1.2  JohnRussell  replied to    4 years ago

Do you think that small business loans to prevent these places from going under were intended for hedge funds or rich yacht owners? 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Low Games

from The Master Game by Robert S. DeRopp

The main types of life games are shown in Table I. Hog in Trough is an object game pure and simple. The aim is to get one's nose in the trough as deeply as possible, guzzle as much as possible, elbow the other hogs aside as forcefully as possible. A strong Hog in Trough player has all the qualities with which communist propaganda endows the capitalist, insatiable greed, ruthlessness, cunning, selfishness.

Pure Hog in Trough is not considered entirely respectable in the contemporary U.S.A. and is generally played today with a certain moderation that would have seemed sissy to the giants of the game who savagely exploited the resources of the continent a century or so ago. The rules of the game have become more complex and the game itself more subtle. 

master_game.jpg
 
 
 
Perrie Halpern R.A.
Professor Principal
5.1.3  Perrie Halpern R.A.  replied to    4 years ago

As another small business owner, everyone works hard and wants a good return. But this money was supposed to help the employees of small businesses. The mom and pop stores, independent restaurants, etc. It was not supposed to go to multi million-dollar businesses. And now the gov wants to give out more money because this was such a mess. I thought that fiscal conservatism was part of the Republican party platform. What happened?

 
 
 
Dean Moriarty
Professor Quiet
6  Dean Moriarty    4 years ago

Another one of those things where Pelosi had to pass it before we found out what’s in it. 

 
 
 
Perrie Halpern R.A.
Professor Principal
6.1  Perrie Halpern R.A.  replied to  Dean Moriarty @6    4 years ago

Dean,

The bill was bi-partisan. It was just as much Mitch McConnell as it was Pelosi. 

 
 
 
Perrie Halpern R.A.
Professor Principal
7  Perrie Halpern R.A.    4 years ago

Great article CK! I wish I could vote it up twice. 

 
 
 
Ender
Professor Principal
8  Ender    4 years ago

When they strip away provisions for oversight this was expected.

 
 
 
Kavika
Professor Principal
9  Kavika     4 years ago

One of the multi-million dollar corporations returned $10 million.

 
 
 
Sister Mary Agnes Ample Bottom
Professor Guide
9.1  Sister Mary Agnes Ample Bottom  replied to  Kavika @9    4 years ago
One of the multi-million dollar corporations returned $10 million.

I'm sure it was just a matter of time before the public learned the names of the companies who abused the system.  Not only did they know better, but the SBA should have known better before writing them a check. 

Lovely that they returned the money, but that doesn't lessen the asshole factor.

 
 
 
Citizen Kane-473667
Professor Participates
9.1.1  seeder  Citizen Kane-473667  replied to  Sister Mary Agnes Ample Bottom @9.1    4 years ago
Lovely that they returned the money, but that doesn't lessen the asshole factor.

Exactly! 

It isn't too hard to figure out the motivation behind this either. We all know that these payroll loans will turn into grants provided they call everyone back to work once the All Clear is sounded. When you have billions, or even millions in profits every year, you don't need to be raping Main Street by raiding the PPP funds!

 
 
 
Split Personality
Professor Guide
9.1.3  Split Personality  replied to  Citizen Kane-473667 @9.1.1    4 years ago

 
 
 
Citizen Kane-473667
Professor Participates
9.1.4  seeder  Citizen Kane-473667  replied to  Split Personality @9.1.3    4 years ago
The report also states that Harvard University ended the 2019 fiscal year with an operating surplus of $298 million, a year in which the "net undergraduate and graduate tuition income increased 4 percent."

They were in dire need of that $9 million, weren't they???

 
 
 
Split Personality
Professor Guide
9.1.5  Split Personality  replied to  Citizen Kane-473667 @9.1.4    4 years ago

Now they deny applying for or receiving PPP.  Interesting.

Trump demands that they return it.  Too funny.

They did apparently receive funds under CARES which they are supposed to apply directly to student tutions for students on financial aid - which is nearly every Harvard student.

“Like most colleges and universities, Harvard has been allocated funds as part of the CARES Act Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund,” Harvard said in a statement. “Harvard has committed that 100% of these emergency higher education funds will be used to provide direct assistance to students facing urgent financial needs due to the COVID-19 pandemic.” Harvard says it will give all the $8.6 million it received directly to students, despite being eligible to spend half that on its institutional costs related to the virus. Other top-tier and highly endowed universities also received funding under the program. Yale University was allocated $6.8 million, the University of Chicago got $6.2 million, and Stanford University took nearly $7.4 million in federal assistance.

 
 

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