Small Business Bailout: Obama Announces New Program To Boost Lending

nytimes.com:

After enduring months of criticism that his administration had done too little to help small businesses weather the recession, President Obama said Wednesday that "there's still too little credit flowing to our small businesses" and unveiled initiatives he said would open the spigot.

The measures, announced by Mr. Obama at a small records storage company in Maryland, would allow smaller community banks to borrow at low rates from the Treasury Department's Troubled Asset Relief Program. It would also raise the loan caps on several popular Small Business Administration programs.

Read the whole story: nytimes.com

Comments

[yourmonscalling]

THIS PLOY IS JUST ANOTHER ATTEMPT TO GET MONEY FOR THE POOR SOBS IN GOVERNMENT

FOR SPENDING TO MUCH

BOO HOO

ELECTION DAY IS COMING

[FreedomCorpse]

Small businesses are always an afterthought to politicians. I remember Bush chest beating about 'supporting small business' when, on the side, all the money was flowing to GOP coffers from huge corporations. Now its the same with democrats. Opposite sides of the same corrupt coin.

[ncmom54]

"Banks are Unintended Beneficiaries of the Bailout"
Larry Summers

[iridium53]

Nothing unintended about it.

This Obama decision is more about the appearance of doing something for Small Business, after getting criticism, than actually doing something substantive. As is so much of what Obama does.

[Flavor]

President Obama, I am so glad that you are doing something different to help our small businesses. I have seen first hand how they are hurting with no help in sight, they have felt left out. Kudo's to you for the effort.

[Brezzydee]

I don't care what President Obama's administration suggest, someone is going to find fault with it. Even if it will help the person or public. So his administration should just keep looking forward, put their plans in place and watch them work.

Now that the money is going to small banks, they can lend it better, and for the people who are not lending (I think some are doing it on purpose to see if President Obama will fail) then the government should pull the money out of those banks, open up a bank section directly through the government for the public, and lend the money from there for interest payments themselves.
And for the big banks that are not lending, the government should pull their money out, sell their stocks on the market, and let them fail. Start fresh with all small banks like it used to be, and should be in the first place.

[AngusC]

This country is on the verge of collapse.
It is a fake economy.
We have gone from a country that manufactured products to a country that plays around with fake money in the stock market.

When you buy a business in the real world you buy it for 2 to 3 times its earnings.
When you buy a business in the stock market it is 30 times its earnings.
It makes no sense.
It is a giant shell game and even though it collapsed last year, people are still putting money right back into the market.

People just do not learn.

Quit investing in the fantasy that is the stock market, buy a reasonable house and car for your income level and pay them off.

[RomeoMD25]

O was Big Finances top recipient in 08 to the tune of $40 million. Might explain
why 9 months later there has been virtually nothing done to reign in Wall St's excesses.
http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/recips.php?ind=F&cycle=2008&recipdetail=A&mem=Y&sortorder=U

[krocklin]

With so much opposition to Obama for political reasons, the reasonable solutions are pretty doomed.
For example, people actually believe healthcare reform will hurt their pocketbook.
They are just too ignorant and there are too many vocal spokesman for egoistic reasons are stirring up oppostion to these solutions, which other countries have adopted decades ago.

[IGGHY]

Wasn't the bailout of banks last year supposed to have done this? Are we still bailing out big banks for their failed mission? This is Obama for you, he comes late on every major issue and only marginally. I am blocking emails from WH now.

[PhilipTaylor]

A GOOD START BUT!

A Government Automated Internet Central Bank (ICB) to serve small businesses and consumers

The competition would be valuable and the ICB can take up the slack Wall Street has left wide open by reducing Credit Lines while raising rates on Credit Cards to 17.5% to 35%. It also can meet the needs of many who want a Home Banking choice.

Automation will play a larger and larger role in Banking!

Home Banking with the Internet and occasional ATM use can remove the Massive Cost of Branch Banking and reduce waiting lines and times!

[josephXY]

Tracy Mitchell's: "The Big Box Swindle" (2007) makes ever more sense. Among others, she
describes how things got increasingly shabbier with the outsourcing, including buying cheap in
China and selling expensively in the US. Somehow the rug was pulled underneath the feet.
It is the story of a systemic self-betrayal. (People were watching to much crap on TV and the
accompanying advertisin­g.) A nice look into that book can had with google books.

Also useful a well-known video with Peter Schiff, his diagnosis: "We have to stop consuming and
borrowing and start saving and producing again." (I think that's an apt description, diagnosis.­)
That video is also really to be recommended because the of the bunch of other (funny)
characters, financial pundits, what they say, forecast, advise, in 06/07. Implicity, that video
identifies a lot of problems, namely the nonsense said on TV. It's a must-see for prudent folks.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2I0QN-FYkpw

[Ken Maddox]

My wife and I own a small business. We have been on the brink of bankruptcy for over two years. We keep going to our creditors and begging for more time, better terms, and forgiveness for our being tardy.
These pleas and platitudes are growing tiresome for us and our creditors.
We have explored numerous programs promising relieve, aid, or reorganization of debt. None of these has been helpful to our situation. SBA has some programs that look promising, but no lenders participate. Credit agencies offer sure fire programs to get out of debt, but that does nothing to solve our cash flow problem.
We have made every sacrifice that our creditors have demanded, we have cut our living and operational expenses to the point of drawing blood. Still the cold hard facts of the present economy are that our customers are struggling in the same environment as we. It is near impossible to increase cash flow when the customer base you serve is cutting back and your product is one of the first to be cut.
I

[RTIII]

As anyone who has already worked with - or tried to work with - the SBA can tell you, the S from SBA doesn't _really_ mean Small, it means Substantial! It's the SUBSTANTIAL business administration. The size of business that they favor is very substantial indeed, bordering on LARGE. One might well call it the LARGE business administration, but that's not a politically advantageous name, so they call it the SMALL business administration in the same way that Iceland is nice and warm with volcanic warmth while Greenland is a big rock with an even bigger chunk of ice on it.

FURTHERMORE the lending policies of the SBA are such that they'll only (statistically speaking) give you a loan if you don't actually need one.

I know. I've tried. I'm an entrepreneur who had a successful business that started on first-customer revenue and never looked back, but when, finally, we had some trouble and looked for an SBA loan, we were never given one, even though we had all the collateral they required, etc, etc, etc, ad nausieum. And from my experience I have spoken with many other business leaders and they have all told me nearly identical stories; the SBA is really not interested in small business at all.

Bottom line: Obama's going to be awfully disappointed when this does NOTHING to help either employment or small business.

The only good thing: MAYBE this will shed light on the failures of the SBA.
.

[themodernleader]

I am shocked and dismayed by the number and types of businesses that have beeen shuttered the past few months. Bridal shops, auto shops, speciality shops of all descriptions are going or gone.
The moral of the story: If you forsake and subvert all your manufactrurers and producers, you better be certain that you have something of value to replace them with. The truth. You can not have a modern society without self sufficiency, full employment on those functions and purposes that constitute modernity. In the absence of private jobs, the government, representing us, must be the employer towards meaningful wealth producing jobs.
Now our country is in the hands ot incompetent managers pointing the way to perdition and servitude. There is no future for the lower 90%. Our leaders--- therefore ourselves--- have dismally failed the pledge to the Preamble to ourselves and our posterity. We are passing a wrecked and penurious nation to our children and their children into generations of crying and the gnashing of teeth.

[bola47]

this initiative requires congressional approval. don't expect congress to approve this program in your lifetime.

[katieandtom]

why bola?

[lippylaroux]

They won't approve it because they hate the private sector small business. They don't believe in independent free thinkers such as small business men. The dems in congrees only want power and that comes from their manipulation of the tax code for big business.