Cited: CNN
An Obama Administration plan to assist small community banks and thereby the small businesses that they serve in their neighborhoods will turn a profit this year somewhere in the neighborhood of $80 million. That is a much better result than the $1.3 billion that the plan was originally expected to cost the American taxpayers.
However, while it is certainly good to hear that the plan didn’t turn out to be a wasteful and costly bailout as many have tried to claim, not nearly as many banks benefited from the
program and therefor the businesses it was supposed to help didn’t get much benefit either. The Treasury Department reported that of the proposed $30 billion allotted for the small business banking plan, only $4 billion was actually distributed to small community banks around the country. Out of a total of 7,000 small banking institutions that would qualify for consideration for the funds, only 933 actually applied and out of that total, only 332 qualified to get the government’s capital.
Part of the reason that more of the money didn’t hit the streets is that most of the banks simply weren’t in good enough standing to qualify for the money. In addition, business conditions in the small retail sector have been so weak that requests for loans from the small business community just weren’t there and so the banks had no need for the funds.
On the other hand, many in the small banking community and among retail businessmen say that the government requirements on the borrowers and the banks were just way too tough to make anyone take a big bite of the government’s proposed plan to pump capital into the retail sector of the economy through the community banking system. The Treasury plan to lend funds to these businesses is still in place and some analysts in the community banking sector say that the initial funds lent to the banks could lead to an additional $32 billion in loans.
One of the banks that benefited most from the government lending program is Alma Bank in Astoria, Queens, N.Y. Alma took nearly $19 million in government funds and has since reported one of the largest gains in their lending to small retail businesses in the Queens, N.Y. area.
Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner told Congress that the funds would continue to help small businesses for many years to come and that already these funds were being put to work by banks that have assisted restaurants and diners in Queens, doctors in Florida, and steel fabricators in Maryland.
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My take:
This sounds like a good program and as long as it continues to help small businesses it sounds like a winner for a long time. And, this is especially true if it continues to turn a profit for the feds. It would be good if the government made it a little easier to get the capital, allowing more banks to participate.
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Other Resources
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