PPP, Where Did the Money Go?!?!
If you at all felt guilty for applying for PPP, or haven’t applied for PPP out of guilt. This may change your mind. Remember the deadline for applications has been extended so if you haven’t applied…
Since this effort started, the participating banks have received $18 billion in fees! Yes, you read that right, $18 billion of the $640 billion which was provided to help small businesses. If you ask me, this is shameful, but we can expect banks to take their pound of flesh at all times.
From the data released by the SBA it looks as if the average PPP loan is $107,000 and 86.5% of the loans issued were under $150,000. This is great news considering the whole premise of this program was to help small businesses even if the banks put their hands in the cookie jar.
Next regular culprits? Our fearless leaders!! We have all seen the headlines dominating news “Companies with Trump ties got Corona-virus small business loans”, however, this is a bit misleading since there are no actual Trump companies listed in the SBA loans but wouldn’t have surprised me if there would have been. What did surprise me was how many politicians connected companies there were which weren’t very readily reported on.
The question now is, who else benefited from this? Speaker of the house? Senate majority leader? All of the above? Well, in multiple choice questions, if you don’t know the answer and an option is “All of the Above”, chances are, “All of the Above” is correct…
That’s right, “$100 millionaire, for the people” Nancy Pelosi got in on some action! What about “free market, pull yourself up by your boot straps” Mitch McConnell? Yea, he got in on the action but says there’s nothing to see here! Phew, thank god! That’s only the beginning though, there’s many more of our honest leaders who may or may not have had an inside track on the PPP…there’s not only politicians but political groups who scooped up some PPP too. A good example of this is the Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation, which is a nonprofit that supports hunting, fishing, and other outdoor activities and is associated with the bipartisan Congressional Sportsmen’s Caucus, they also accepted a loan between $350,000 and $1 million. Seems essential…
So, if you got some PPP, we’re so happy for you, if you haven’t, apply today!!!!
Should you want to dig a little further here is the entire list the SBA put out of recipients getting 150k or more in PPP and if you want to dig into your favorite politician go to opensecrets.org which is a repository of all financial disclosures produced by our FEARLESS LEADERS!!! My favorite so far is Piatti Restaurant Co. where Speaker Pelosi’s share is worth $1-5 million, and they received between $2.5-5 million in PPP funds. Enjoy the rabbit hole!!