Anytime needed stimulus goes through banks, don't be surprised if it never makes it out of said bank or to the intended locations as they are self-preservation first as expected.
Banks should help the river and get access to the flow, they shouldn't be a dam that holds back the flow, filtering only for their customers or large companies masquerading as "small business".
Had policy sent the money directly to companies from the SBA/IRS, customers then would choose the banks to service that guaranteed government grant/loan essentially. Much like the FAFSA system for student loans, you get your amount, then a servicer handles the actual loan but there is literally no risk to them as it is guaranteed.
Why we sent guaranteed money to be held up in banks and did information and credit checks, on already known information from the IRS, well we know why, to pilfer it.
Had they ran it a better way, using the actual market, directly to businesses/individuals, that is lots of money out there for banks to go get and the market knows it is out there as well. Markets like knowing hundreds of billions and trillions are out there to go get. Make them earn the fees if they must.
Instead, it was a direct transfer from the Fed and treasury to QE that was pilfered by the usual suspects: hedge funds, market makers, foreign funds, oligarchs, wealth/value extraction ops, naked short selling, short and distort and more. The SBA money was pilfered by banks and large companies. The 'stimulus' for the economy, routed around the entire actual economy, never reaching individuals or true small business.
Companies that received SBA funding many are listed on the public markets. I doubt most people would call "small business" companies that have IPOed and been on the market for years. These companies have other access to funds, they just wanted the 1% loans and took from hundreds and thousands of small businesses that supply them, subscribe to their services, buy their software, consume their products, feed them and other services.
Examples of companies that got SBA PPP and other [1]:
- Drive Shack Inc. (DS) $5,276,742 - Golf company like TopGolf... wow. That would have funded many, many small businesses.
- New Age Beverages Corp. (NBEV) $6,868,400 - Revenues 250~ million...
Isn't it safe to say if you have a stock ticker and one of 3812~ companies on the public markets that you aren't "small business"?
How to fix it...
We need a micro small business emergency stimulus.
- Less than 50 employees across ALL locations, less than 2-3 million revenues and sole proprietors.
- There can be no gaps to allow this to go to the already serviced.
- Include sole proprietors and really small companies (The current "small business" designation is really small to medium to large businesses. However, sole proprietors are 73% of all small business.
America is mostly small businesses.
SBA/Chamber of Commerce has 30.2 million for companies under 500 people. [2]
Lots are sole proprietors or very small companies with 22 million of the small businesses in the United States are individually operated, meaning that they have no other employees other than the owner.
99.9% of businesses in the United States are small businesses, owing to the rather large threshold of 500 employees, or fewer.
Small business is the engine of America.
Small businesses comprise what share of the U.S. economy?
Small businesses make up [3]:
- 99.7 percent of U.S. employer firms,
- 64 percent of net new private-sector jobs,
- 49.2 percent of private-sector employment,
- 42.9 percent of private-sector payroll,
- 46 percent of private-sector output,
- 43 percent of high-tech employment,
- 98 percent of firms exporting goods,
- 33 percent of exporting value.
It is time to help the lower/middle, sole-proprietors and small business or America as we know it is much much different after this.
About 8 trillion in 'stimulus' and QE, at a cost of 20k to every citizen, for that individuals got $1200 many haven't got yet and small businesses finding out how small of fish they a really are.
The banks helped the big fish, but the big fish need the small fish to survive.
Money trickles up and down and all around, but money only trickles where other money is found.
This market is broken for lower/middle and people or small business. It is gangbusters for wealth and value extraction ops. How long can this go on?
The stimulus for individuals, families and small business is vaporware, time for some vaporwave as we fade away into the ether.
Good luck wealth and big business with no one to skim from and no small business to use as research and development or suppliers.
Maybe it needs to be framed in the way that it is an additional bailout for their own companies and interests. Most of that money makes it back into banks, larger companies, wealth, top end etc.
If consumers have purchasing power and small companies buy up their services, supply them, and are where they make their money broadly, maybe their self-interest will align with the actual market.
Our policies already downplay the importance of wages, consumer base purchasing power and just keep piling on the backs of a finite resource. How long do can the wealth extraction keep happening before there is none left and stagnation takes over in a big way? Rich people and large companies can only buy so much, the long tail of small businesses and consumer purchasing power is America, it is under attack.
Real wages and purchasing power have barely budged in 40 years [4].
Worker share of GDP being on a long dwindle down [5] and velocity of money is off a cliff [6], that is why we are so stagnant.
Richest 1% of Americans Close to Surpassing Wealth of Middle Class [7]
Money trickles up and down and all around, but money only trickles where other money is found.
If there isn't purchasing power or demand, that is hard to create. Why are we widdling it down day by day, year by year, decade by decade?
What happens when The Giving Tree is a stump?
[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/these-are-the-public-companies-...
[2] https://www.chamberofcommerce.org/small-business-statistics/
[3] https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/FAQ_Sept_2012.pdf Source: U.S. Census Bureau, SUSB, CPS; International Trade Administration; Bureau of Labor Statistics, BED; Advocacy-funded research, Small Business GDP: Update 2002- 2010, www.sba.gov/advocacy/7540/42371.
[4] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us...
[5] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/W270RE1A156NBEA
[6] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2V
[7] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-09/one-perce...