Which Banks are Making SBA Loans?

Update - Last Monday (11/16), Senator Olympia Snowe, the self-proclaimed advocate of small business and ranking member on the Senate's small business committee, quietly slipped into the process legislation to kill the ARC program immediately and return all unused funds directly back to the Treasury as soon as the bill is signed. Even if you are already approved and may have received the first of your six monthly payments, you would lose the other five. If you've been approved and have started seeing the payments, you won't see a dime. Snowe's rationale? She claims that she can't support the program any longer because of the proposed "60" default rate". This is a classic soundbite strategy that, when quickly deconstructed, shows that Snowe thinks small business people are stupid and not paying attention. First, the estimated default rate (56%, not 60% - she's exaggerating for her convenience) was published in February by the SBA and Snowe was fully aware of it as the main sponsor of the ARC loan back then. She loved the bill and the default rate at that time. Second, not a single ARC loan had come anywhere close to default - not one. Where's the mention of this, Olympia? Third, if you do even a cursory analysis of who is getting this loan, you would place the probably default rate on this program at closet to 1-2%, not 56%. This program was set up, according to Karen Mills, head of the SBA, for "immediate relief" of "distressed but viable" small businesses - her words ten months ago. But almost every single loan approved has been for extremely healthy small businesses that don't need any of this money and are laughing all the way from the bank. I work with thousands of small business owners and saw only three ARC loans approved, and all three of these businesses were accelerating right through the recession with great strength. Snowe knows the default rate will never come anywhere close to what she signed off on in February. So why is she claiming this and wanting to end the program? Two reasons: 1) She is a politician, not a statesperson. As a politician, she acts in the interest of those who are most likely to give her the most money for relection. She is only the advocate of small business as long as it does not conflict with her real loyalties to large business and large banks that fund her political existence. The big banks are getting killed in the court of political opinion because of their unwillingness to make any loans to "distressed but viable" small businesses and they are pounding her door down to kill this program and shove it under the carpet. 2) Karen Mills is from Maine. The ARC loan program has served to expose the SBA's ongoing lack of support of true small businesses under 20 employees, and Mills is also getting clobbered for her "immediate relief" and "distressed but viable" comments - she wants this program gone asap and is all over her buddy Snowe to dump it. Olympia Snowe has long had a pretense of being the advocate of small business. But as you can see by her desire to kill the very bill that, for the first time in 50 years of SBA existence was actually supposed to help true small businesses, she has showed her cards. Her handlers are big business, big banks, and the SBA. If nothing else good comes from this travesty, we have clear and undiable proof now of who is the friend of small business, and Olympia Snowe can not longer claim that pretense.