ACCESS TO BUSINESS LOANS, BIZSMART,
Fed pressed to expand aid to some businesses
WASHINGTON — With the economy still in the pandemic’s grip, the Federal Reserve is facing a decision on whether to stretch an emergency lending program in a way that could bring more risk for the government and taxpayers. Lawmakers are pressing the central bank to deliver more aid to struggling small and mid-sized businesses.
The economic recovery has been uneven and painfully slow in the wake of shutdowns from the coronavirus.
The pandemic has killed some 180,000 people in the U.S., and the number of laid-off workers collecting jobless benefits exceeds 14.5 million.
And now many lawmakers are asking the Fed to expand its lending to small and medium-sized businesses, by allowing companies to offer assets such as commercial properties as collateral. They warn that hard-hit hotels and shopping malls could suffer a huge wave of foreclosures, hurting local communities and jobs across the country.
“Inaction would be disastrous for taxpayers, for employees, for communities,” Rep. Van Taylor, a Texas Republican who is a leader of the bipartisan effort, said in an interview. He said the point is to save the jobs of the anxious hotel housekeepers, shift supervisors and other employees he’s heard from, most of them minorities.
The decision is on the doorstep of Fed Chairman Jay Powell and Steven Mnuchin, the Trump administration’s treasury secretary. Using money from Congress’ coronavirus relief package, the Treasury Department is guaranteeing the Fed’s lending programs — hundreds of billions each — to corporations, smaller businesses and state and local governments.
Powell and Mnuchin have said they’re considering the option.
But some critics say the lending expansion would be risky, and might actually help big investors in the companies rather than the workers.
The Fed faces a sort of Goldilocks dilemma over risk: How much is just right? With the prospect of continued economic hardship and severe unemployment on the near horizon, the central bank has to balance the benefits of government aid against the risk of losses to taxpayers.
The economic disruptions caused by the coronavirus health crisis called for massive federal aid programs, unprecedented in scope.
U.S. taxpayers are funding them. So if a company fails after receiving a government emergency loan and can’t repay it, taxpayers take the loss.
Lawmakers are pressing for a broader approach in part because the Fed’s Main Street lending program for small and mid-sized businesses, to which it’s committing up to $600 billion, has had a slow start, with only modest borrower interest. They want the Fed to allow companies to qualify based on assets such as commercial properties, rather than measures of financial condition.
But Bharat Ramamurti, a Democratic appointee to the new Congressional Oversight Commission, says he has serious concerns. “It’s risky because it can be hard for the Fed to accurately appraise assets right now,” he told The Associated Press. “And in some important cases like hotels, it would help deep-pocketed property owners like private equity firms without any guarantee of helping bellhops and waitstaff and housekeepers.”
The only one of four members on the oversight panel who isn’t a member of Congress, Ramamurti was a senior policy adviser to Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a leading Democratic critic of Wall Street and corporations.
Leveraging the funds from Congress’ relief package, the Treasury Department is guaranteeing trillions of dollars — up to $4.5 trillion — in the Fed’s lending programs. The financial wizardry rests on a key assumption: The companies receiving the loans are deemed likely to repay once the crisis has passed and the economy has recovered.
Mnuchin has laid out the administration’s gamble. He says it’s possible that the government could lose some of the money it puts up. “Our intention is that we expect to take some losses. That’s our base-case scenario,” Mnuchin told Congress.