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Small business rescue earned banks $10B in fees

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221–230 of 342 posts

Re: Small business rescue earned banks $10B in fees

#221
post #38

The thing here is the bank isn’t taking any risk here. All the loans are guaranteed by the government. So banks are really just a middle man that is transferring money from the SBA to a small business’s bank account and taking on zero credit risk. The government has the ability to send funds directly to people obviously...that’s how they are sending the stimulus checks and send tax refunds. Banks are basically being…

Not only they are not taking risk, they get to pick who gets the funding so they further optimize their bottom line, by say favoring bigger loans or loans to their most indebted customers. I hope there is a reckoning but I am pretty sure there will be bonuses to the CEO's instead.

well.. we could occupy zuccotti park again, except now it's illegal to have more than 100 people in the same place together.

sincerely,

"the civil liberties lobby"

Re: Small business rescue earned banks $10B in fees

#223
post #11

Gotta ask whether the banking system makes sense in its current form. - Part of it is actually a utility. Payments, sending money from one place to another, making sure there's an account at the other end of that number. Everyone needs this, yet being a huge international network there isn't a whole lot that one bank offers that another cannot. - Part of it is deciding who to lend money to. Makes sense for the bank t…

Consider that the Information Age has made actual financial work vastly less expensive (computers, spreadsheets, digital communication, etc.) while at the same time the finance sector has grown to be a much higher portion of the economy (in GDP). There could be a plausible explanation, but it certainly seems fishy.

Do you know how many more financial abstractions exist today than 40 years ago? That being said, I fully support moving 90+% of financial activity to smart contracts.

Re: Small business rescue earned banks $10B in fees

#224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The root problem was Trump team didn't put in enough money, included too many rich businesses, and didn't require a fair order. Banks knew they didn't have enough meat yet were feeding a frenzy: of course the big dogs pushed through to the front. So now we blame Banks instead of Trump. Yet if Trump repeats the plan without prioritizing actual small businesses, the co's big enough for in-house accountants and big loan…

> Trump team didn't put in enough money You know, the president doesn't write legislation or appropriate money. That's on Congress.

Yes, because we know exactly where the buck doesn't stop.

They're getting ready for round 2, and if the rule setters do the same thing, we'll get the same result.

People want to blame the banks -- and banks share the blame -- but they are not the root cause. The legislated rules are like physics, you don't get mad at the water flowing wrong but at the people who planned the river. The planning committee is doing all sorts of weird stuff, but the people with the most control is republicans, and via veto etc, the president. Those are the people deciding to whom the river flows and with how much water. They knew there would be more applicants than money, and the bigger applicants would have accountants and bank managers ready to leap, yet they still didn't put any priority order in for small businesses. Instead, they spent that time putting in carveouts for big hotel owners. If you think they didn't make it fair, it's their blame.

I don't even know why we're doing this via banks to beginwith, that just adds a massive & confusing middle layer of uninvolved for-profit companies. Feels like not knowing how to use the system, or corruption... which is again, a problem upstream.

Re: Small business rescue earned banks $10B in fees

#225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The IRS has the capability to put money directly into business bank accounts, or require businesses to sign up for EFTPS.

how about handling their applications, eligibility? They don't. It's not like every business for $500K each so let's deposit it

Like I said they are being compensated for doing paperwork. But the compensation appears to far exceed the effort required especially if most customers are applying through an existing banking relationship.

Re: Small business rescue earned banks $10B in fees

#226

Gotta ask whether the banking system makes sense in its current form. - Part of it is actually a utility. Payments, sending money from one place to another, making sure there's an account at the other end of that number. Everyone needs this, yet being a huge international network there isn't a whole lot that one bank offers that another cannot. - Part of it is deciding who to lend money to. Makes sense for the bank t…

You miss the trust part.

I want to transfer big sum of money, essentially my life savings to someone.

Who do I choose for the job:

- local post office

- some crypto mumbo-jumbo that a lot of criminals use

- huge institution with daily income five orders of magnitude more than the sum I am talking about, regulated up to a dollar with 100 years of history of earning international trust

- some other option

?

Re: Small business rescue earned banks $10B in fees

#227
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you see the upvote/downvote counts on HN?

Greyed out means zero or below.

Correct. But if you click on the comment's timestamp to go to its page, the text should be black again so you can read it.

Re: Small business rescue earned banks $10B in fees

#228

Gotta ask whether the banking system makes sense in its current form. - Part of it is actually a utility. Payments, sending money from one place to another, making sure there's an account at the other end of that number. Everyone needs this, yet being a huge international network there isn't a whole lot that one bank offers that another cannot. - Part of it is deciding who to lend money to. Makes sense for the bank t…

> We don't want money laundering Can you explain this? It's never made any sense, at all. 1. If you earn excess unreported income, eventually the IRS will figure it out and come get their cut. 2. If you earn it through criminal means, you're already committing a crime for which, if caught, you will be punished. Why is the act of obfuscating the source of income a crime? Who gets harmed by this, that isn't already har…

It's not a crime if the source is legitimate, but if you ask me to hold on to a bag of cash which your friend will retrieve tomorrow, then it's reasonable for me to ask if the cash is legit. Otherwise, I may be harmed by being part of a crime.

It's no different for a financial institution holding onto a bag of cash.

Re: Small business rescue earned banks $10B in fees

#229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The IRS has the capability to put money directly into business bank accounts, or require businesses to sign up for EFTPS.

how about handling their applications, eligibility? They don't. It's not like every business for $500K each so let's deposit it

At the end of each PPP application with your bank, you get the same SBA PPP form to sign as the SBA has publicized on their web page. You then have to sign and pinkie swear that the funds are necessary and going to payroll.

The banks are doing jack shit in terms of useful work except shoveling application's SBA's way, with the SBA being the ultimate approver of the loan anyway! Bank are just in middle and limiting applications to their existing customers for no good reason whatsoever.

Re: Small business rescue earned banks $10B in fees

#230
post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Obviously it isn't very palatable to hear about others making money off of this kind of thing but we need incentives for people to step up and help. With "people" you mean private businesses in this context I suppose? If so you could call these incentives "regulations".

Regulations to work for free?

Regulations to help with small business loans with maximum $amount per transaction. If the total amount then accumulates to $10bn or more, fine nothing to see here.

I suspect that is not the case here.

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