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> Forgiven? Then its not a loan anymore is it? Its a bailout. Was the intention to give a handout of cash to small businesses free of charge? Yes, it's handing

> Forgiven? Then its not a loan anymore is it? Its a bailout. Was the intention to give a handout of cash to small businesses free of charge? Yes, it's handing out free money to some and not others based on basically nothing. What's worse, the banks are collecting a cool 1% whether someone pays back the loan or not. 300B in loans is 3B to the banks, 0 risk. > Its pretty transparent that this funding was never intended to make it to taco trucks and barbers. Sadly, I don't think the congress people are that smart. They probably actually thought this program would work in some useful capacity.

luckylion 7y ago
> Sadly, I don't think the congress people are that smart. They probably actually thought this program would work in some useful capacity. At some point, being charitable and choosing incompetence over intention as the explanation for behavior does become willful naivete, doesn't it?
- NateEag 7y ago
  Yes, but I don't think we're there yet. Even if we assume this bill was passed entirely as an attempt to curry favor with voters, it should be clear that such an attempt would be doomed if it tried to favor big companies while claiming to be aimed at little ones. Congresspeople try hard to avoid obvious lies, especially about things all voters care about, and most especially during an election year.
  - salawat 7y ago
    To expand on this, legislators aren't exactly known for their higher order conflict resolution strategies when lawmaking, and the "politician's fallacy" is called what it is for a reason. I was highly skeptical of their proposal from the get go simply because there wasn't anything preventing "large" players from attaining leverage other than their own sensibilities. Something which sadly is a bit fraught in the historical sense.
kube-system 7y ago
Of course the banks are collecting money. Someone has to administer the loans, and there are costs to doing this. It is basically impossible to create a new organization overnight to do this, so existing channels were used.
_curious_ 7y ago
"Yes, it's handing out free money to some and not others based on basically nothing." It's not based on "basically nothing" - at least from the banks perspective as originators in this case - it's based on which corporate accounts are deemed to be of greatest financial value to them. They can, will, did pick and choose loan beneficiaries in their portfolio based on how it will benefit them - nothing less. This means that business customers with big debts to the bank were a priority. It's absolutely a bailout of the banks in a difference scheme, albeit a bit more blatantly nepotistic than we're used to seeing so far. And yes, they get a point in services for treating themselves too... All that said, your gist is correct in that it's basically free money benefiting some at the expense of others which is why personally, morally, I am not in favor of corporate welfare under any circumstances - impossible to do so "fairly".
- linuxftw 7y ago
  Great points about bank favoritism. I assumed (possibly wrongly) that the loans were being handed out on a first-come, first-served basis, but as you indicate, banks are most likely fast-tracking applications that benefit their largest debtors the most. It seems all bailouts are bank bailouts, and all bank bailouts are CDO bailouts.

luckylion 7y ago

> Sadly, I don't think the congress people are that smart. They probably actually thought this program would work in some useful capacity. At some point, being charitable and choosing incompetence over intention as the explanation for behavior does become willful naivete, doesn't it?

NateEag 7y ago
Yes, but I don't think we're there yet. Even if we assume this bill was passed entirely as an attempt to curry favor with voters, it should be clear that such an attempt would be doomed if it tried to favor big companies while claiming to be aimed at little ones. Congresspeople try hard to avoid obvious lies, especially about things all voters care about, and most especially during an election year.
- salawat 7y ago
  To expand on this, legislators aren't exactly known for their higher order conflict resolution strategies when lawmaking, and the "politician's fallacy" is called what it is for a reason. I was highly skeptical of their proposal from the get go simply because there wasn't anything preventing "large" players from attaining leverage other than their own sensibilities. Something which sadly is a bit fraught in the historical sense.

kube-system 7y ago

Of course the banks are collecting money. Someone has to administer the loans, and there are costs to doing this. It is basically impossible to create a new organization overnight to do this, so existing channels were used.

_curious_ 7y ago

"Yes, it's handing out free money to some and not others based on basically nothing." It's not based on "basically nothing" - at least from the banks perspective as originators in this case - it's based on which corporate accounts are deemed to be of greatest financial value to them. They can, will, did pick and choose loan beneficiaries in their portfolio based on how it will benefit them - nothing less. This means that business customers with big debts to the bank were a priority. It's absolutely a bailout of the banks in a difference scheme, albeit a bit more blatantly nepotistic than we're used to seeing so far. And yes, they get a point in services for treating themselves too... All that said, your gist is correct in that it's basically free money benefiting some at the expense of others which is why personally, morally, I am not in favor of corporate welfare under any circumstances - impossible to do so "fairly".

linuxftw 7y ago
Great points about bank favoritism. I assumed (possibly wrongly) that the loans were being handed out on a first-come, first-served basis, but as you indicate, banks are most likely fast-tracking applications that benefit their largest debtors the most. It seems all bailouts are bank bailouts, and all bank bailouts are CDO bailouts.