Searchable PPP Loan Data
pppreport.org
pppreport.org
These are loans. They are two year low interest loans. They have to be paid back unless some or all is forgiven. Forgiveness requires documentation on employees retained, wage history, and is capped at $20k/employee maximum. And of course a piece of that comes back to the government in terms of payroll taxes. Just because a company took a 1M loan, doesn't mean it will be 100% forgiven.
For those complaining the companies don't "need" the money - I know many households who received $4k+ in stimulus checks that didn't need it. Should they not have taken it?
And anyways, the whole point of this program was to get money to businesses quickly. Means testing takes time. Sure there are going to be some questionable loans. Some fraud too. But overall our government has spent a lot more money and gotten worse returns than the PPP.
RIPE for favoritism, aka, corruption.
Corruption and fraud are certainly possible - though the lenders got paid from the government just for originating the loans. That is, they already made their money. There's no extra money in them over-forgiving a loan.
Source - applicant for 4 separate, PPP loans that were eventually awarded.
Banks are not stupid. They awarded funds first to their clients that had outstanding loans with them. That meant the banks' own portfolio was not impaired, thanks to influx of PPP
I seriously considered not cashing my stimulus check until I talked to multiple well off people that cashed their dead relative's checks. There just isnt a cultural expectation in the US that you wouldn't take what you're given.
EDIT: Rethinking my comment I'm giving myself too much credit. Since I never got a physical check, I couldn't have "not cashed it" if I wanted to.
Unless there is some weird allowance (widower/widow inheritance, etc.) wouldn’t this be straight fraud?
I know in some countries people don’t report their relatives’ deaths in order to keep receiving their benefits, but obviously that’s illegal too.
In a sense, I am glad it is getting some scrutiny as clearly people who did not need the money benefited ( likely at the expense of people who really needed it - the currently public fraud cases are pretty amazing already ), but I am worried that this kind of scrutiny will make people hesitant to apply in the future just to avoid the headache.
I'd think if the estate is still open, it'd get rolled into that as income legally.
> Q13. Why did the IRS send Economic Impact Payments (EIPs) to deceased individuals? (added June 26, 2020)
> A13. Upon enactment of the CARES Act, the IRS worked with unprecedented speed to issue Economic Impact Payments to individuals. The IRS initially implemented the legislation consistent with processes and requirements used with the 2008 stimulus payments, which resulted in EIPs being issued to certain deceased individuals. After further review, it was determined that such persons are ineligible, and the IRS has taken action to prevent future payments to deceased individuals.
https://www.irs.gov/coronavirus/economic-impact-payment-info...
There's lots we could have spent the money on, but we didn't need it - we've had to go without meals before, this wasn't that.
I think one can easily justify taking the money when you don't need it. Possibly the most moral action would have been to take it and help people who couldn't get the help and really needed.
We've had no problem taking charity, still most of the kids clothes are hand-me-downs from other families; and I don't see income support as charity per se, and we take income support of other types not related to being jobless.
The "you've paid in" argument would probably not be on our side either.
Maybe that fleshes things out anecdotally.
I wouldn't judge a program because of people committing outright fraud.
> if a 24-week Covered Period applies, does not exceed 2.5 months’ worth of 2019 compensation for any owneremployee or self-employed individual/general partner, capped at $20,833 per individual; and
> if the Borrower has elected an 8-week Covered Period, does not exceed 8 weeks’ worth of 2019 compensation for any owner-employee or self-employed individual/general partner, capped at $15,385 per individual.
It’s important to note that the SBA issued its announcement after the public outrage of large companies receiving PPP. They have since back tracked and issued a blanket protection from audit for loans under $2M but the damage was done and the $130B hasn’t been touched since.
anything I can read about that?
There are estimates that we actually need a second PPP of the same size ($600B) because lock downs are going to start again.
They allocated 350bn, it all got spent.
Then they allocated more, and some of that second round of money is left.
After the SBA guidance application volume dropped off a cliff so the SBA, backpedaling, issued new guidance that they wouldn’t audit loans under $2M, but by then no one wanted to take the risk.
This is a highly politicized way to frame PPP loans. Its more like: "These loans are forgiven, unless you scammed the government." These loans were specifically designed to be forgiven, a minimum of 75% of the loan was to be for payroll and if used for payroll (what it was supposed to be used for) that portion of the loan will be forgiven.
>Just because a company took a 1M loan, doesn't mean it will be 100% forgiven.
Again this is so carefully worded to send a false signal...true "it doesn't mean" it will be 100% forgiven. But again the goal is for at least 75% to be forgiven up to 100%. The idea is businesses were supposed to get a loan with 75% allocated to payroll expenses and the extra 25% to approved non-payroll expenses (example: rent) and the portion used for payroll should be 100% forgiven...which in many cases will be the full amount of the loan, because many businesses didn't add an extra 25% for non-payroll expenses and just took the forgivable payroll portion.
Basically the only reason/way these loans would be repaid is if business took out the loans and spent the money on non-payroll expenses...that should be fraud and result in jail not a nice cushy 1% interest rate for people committing fraud.
So it kind of irks me to see some people frame this like a large percentage of these loans will be paid back. Not only is that not the case, it was never intended to be the case.
I constantly see this..."its not free money, its a loan, and the money will be paid back with interest, just like in 2008."
No, its free money for businesses, many of which will fail and let their employees go anyway.
Then you hear people claim how somehow it was a victory to keep people off unemployment for 8 weeks, but not a single person can explain why that is such a benefit. Its sort of like saying hey when Corona virus began I stopped flights from Country X and saved 10's of thousands of lives...maybe deaths were delayed but there is no evidence they were prevented.
If it goes to salaries, those salaries are taxed (both payroll taxes for the employer and income taxes for the employee).
Those salaries, for the most part, get spent - on things with sales tax, creating business profits that are taxed, and supporting the employment of employees' whose wages are also taxed.
The idea that it's one giant money suck for businesses with no immediate return to the economy is not really accurate - it's not a zero-sum game.
No one argues $600B wouldn't help the economy. Can you point to where I said PPP will not help the economy?
Most people are starting to understand the fraud involved with PPP and understanding those funds could have gone to individuals and the money would have found its way back into the economy just the same...only faster as its not distributed out over 8 weeks with 25% reserved for non-payroll business expenses.
Of course there are arguments for why the money should have gone to businesses as it did and not people...but you don't hear any lawmakers making those argument publicly and if you do its limited to "we are saving jobs." My argument, if you feel compelled to call it that, is that there is no proof these jobs have been saved unless delaying unemployment by 8 weeks is considered a job.
how could this possibly be true? the economy started tanking because people stopped going out and spending money. giving people money wouldnt fix this.
People continued spending money...mortgage/rent; car loans/insurance; food; etc...
>giving people money wouldnt fix this.
PPP didn't fix it did it?
There is an eviction and foreclosure crisis looming...giving people money may have done a better job than PPP in avoiding this coming disaster.
i must be misunderstanding. surely you're not claiming that ordering people to stay inside and restricting building capacities didn't severely lower business revenue, are you?
> PPP didn't fix it did it?
i dont know why you said this. the PPP almost certainly fixed the short term problems created by a national quarantine. we're not out of the woods yet, but what do you think happened to all the money? you think hundreds of thousands of small business owners simultaneously committed fraud and didnt use the PPP for payroll? the PPP gave people money for rent, how did it not?
If you do nothing and let tons of businesses close, then there's a huge chunk of the machinery of the economy missing once you start loosening the health regulations.
Yes, if a company spent 60% (down from 75%) of their loan on payroll, and does not exceed the 20k cap per employee, and retained the same number of employees they had at the beginning of the covered period, and can document all this, and they followed the initial SBA guidance when deciding how big of a loan to apply for, then they will get most or all of the loan forgiven.
There are lots of comments here about "what about the nail salon who has 14 employees and took 5-10M?!?!". Well, assuming that isn't just a case of bad data, there is no reasonable expectation that the loan will be forgiven in it's entirety. The majority will need to be returned to the lender plus interest.
If true that is an obvious case of fraud and you are making my point, the only time a loan will be repaid is if the money was spent on things other than payroll...which amounts to fraud.
Who cares if its a nail salon? Math is math, if you have 14 employees the maximum eligibility would be 8 weeks of payroll with a cap at $100k salary + up to an addition 25% for non-payroll expenses. $5-$10M for a business with 14 employees is fraud on its face.
I don't think you know that many people then. I don't know a ton, but everyone I know is expecting to get 100% of the loan forgiven. Main reason being you just need to show that money is spent on payroll, mortgage interest and utilities. For a lot of businesses it isn't that hard to shift accounts around to show those costs are higher than their PPP amounts.
That was my entire point is that the loans were designed to forgive a minimum of 75% of the loan, but it is 100% forgiven if they limited their loan application to 8 weeks of payroll.
All the people you know took 20% more for salary than they were supposed to and they should pay it back. Even based on your personal experience you should know this isn't the way to describe the program:
>These are loans. They are two year low interest loans. They have to be paid back unless some or all is forgiven.
Rather in your personal experience most of the loans will be 80% forgiven.
What do you call a loan that you still owe? A loan. Once the forgiveness guidance is finalized and people are actually receiving it, then perhaps I will recharacterize my description.
This is what I meant by political couching: Do you know any one who has paid back a single dollar?
>These are loans.
Fine care to loan me $1M and I'll pay you back 20% with interest.
And how often do they have forgiveness terms?
Overall though I’d expect 75-95% of program funds to be forgiven as they have extended the time window from 8 to 24 weeks making it much easier to use all funds in a forgivable way.
Where did I say that?
I'd be shocked if someone somehow got something that egregious through.
I think your misunderstanding is that the rules actually get followed. What happens when everyone in the scheme comes back and says "the economy is shit, we can't pay that regardless" or more optimistically businesses that have 100's of employees that simply plea with the government that they can't repay their loans, but should be given 100% forgiveness in the spirit of "keeping unemployment low". It's far too political to introduce/enforce anything that makes unemployment numbers worse. It's like a "too big to fail" on a much larger order of magnitude.
> the whole point of this program was to get money to businesses quickly. Means testing takes time. Sure there are going to be some questionable loans. Some fraud too. But overall our government has spent a lot more money and gotten worse returns than the PPP.
I consider rape less evil than murder so hey I guess I shouldn't be so critical of rapists! Look, I know those things aren't totally analogous, but the point is that it's OKAY to be critical of the government, especially when a government program benefits those who need it the least.
Let’s tone down the rhetoric a bit, in no way are PPP loans close to rape or murder in magnitude of harm so it’s an inflammatory analogy with no purpose.
In terms of the actual problems with PPP and percent of bad loans. Think of the counter factual. Would you rather have 1% bad loans or a wave of bankruptcies and layoffs triggering a depression that last 10 years? What about 10% bad loans? 50%?
The PPP was well designed and administered under the circumstances. Let’s make improvements because we are not out of the woods yet. But let’s not scape goat or focus on the edge case problems and then destroy all of the benefits prevented harm.
And yet those businesses either didn't get the loans or got a minuscule amount comparatively speaking (especially to those who knew how to game the system).
> in no way are PPP loans close to rape or murder in magnitude of harm so it’s an inflammatory analogy with no purpose
It was meant as a comparative analogy (murder to rape, as PPP to <whatever is worse>) not from (rape as to PPP, as murder is to <whatever is worse>). That was my purpose - two bad immediately recognizable crimes in society with one being considered worse.
> Would you rather have 1% bad loans or a wave of bankruptcies and layoffs triggering a depression that last 10 years? What about 10% bad loans? 50%?
I'd rather have a civil debate about whether that's effective (see Japan's lost decade for comparisons of why quantitative easing has even longer potentially more disastrous issues). You're kidding yourself if you unilaterally think that the PPP program is the only way to alleviate yourself from a "wave of bankruptcies and layoffs triggering a depression that last 10 years". Again, we're just kicking the can down the road, like we always do.
Yes and ?
The virus wasn't any company's fault. The choice to respond to the virus by shutting down the economy wasn't any company's fault.
Previous epidemics in human history have been dealt with by simply accepting a death rate that modern society, via government policy, has chosen to not accept. This was an unprecedented response that no business could have predicted.
Why do so many of us view businesses who pay employees as the enemy? Agreed 100% on the fact that many of us on this board got stimulus checks that were later spent on mountain bikes or other luxury items. Members of the privileged keyboard class didn't need them at all. People who work with their hands ought to be pretty pissed off they simply didn't get double what they got while we received nothing.
Look at this: in 2019 Delta Airlines spent around $2b buying their own stock [1]. They also spent $300m buying their own stock in March 2020. In April 2020 they received $5b in government assistance [2]. What if instead of spending billions of dollars to improve their stock price, they saved some of that money in case they ever had a crisis to deal with?
It's not like this is the first time the airlines have been bailed out before, either. 9/11 wasn't that long ago.
[1] https://ycharts.com/companies/DAL/stock_buyback
[2] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/major-u-airlines-accept-gover...
The thing is, if we don’t want to help companies that conduct stock buy backs during times of plenty, then need help during times of famine, 1. The time of famine or pandemic is not the time to fight that battle. Let’s revise stock but back law later. 2. Honestly, no policy can be designed to handle a global pandemic. This is not a normal time. Let’s leave the blame and moralizing for a few years from now.
Stock buy backs used to be illegal. Maybe they should be again. Or maybe only after a company has passed a financial stress test.
The thing is, the more we design the system for these unexpected edge cases the more complicated it gets. Maybe it just be better to have something like FDIC insurance that all companies buy and kicks in automatically.
Would it be better to let the city burn down today because we're worried about a water shortage in 100 years?
What's strange about that is that there were/are so many unknowns. Sure, you could be booming, but what if the unexpected strikes and you are suddenly not booming due to yet another unforeseeable event? The worst estimates were that millions would die and we'd be heading into an era that would eclipse the great depression.
As prepped as you were, and as well as you were doing — taking every opportunity to add layers of resilience would seem like the smart thing to do, especially when you've got employees with families, customers that depend on you, etc.
I'd rather have some of the waste money going to families over businesses for once. Families have to worry about loss of income and loss of health during this. Businesses just have to worry about income. Families are more fragile and should be prioritized.
I am totally with you when it comes to companies with deep pockets but a lot of very small businesses are really just a group of individuals trying to survive together.
Only owners are capped at $20K. Employees are capped at $46K over the 24 week period, which works out to be that any employee making $100K or less annually is full covered under forgiveness.
"Need" is probably not the way to look at this, anytime there is "free money" there will be incredibly wealthy businesses and organizations with "need." There is a school of thought that you should "always need" free money. I think that's just business. I think the actual distribution is where you look.
It would be completely foolish, ATMO, to believe that every organization, bank, and business were treated equally or fairly in this process. We already know that banks like Cross River handled what appears to be a disproportional amount of the approved "loans," presumably because they are a slick fintech business. When the dust fully settles, I would be shocked if the distribution of the funds or the forgiveness was in any way egalitarian, the country just isn't. I fully expect that it will be another mechanism in which certain classes benefit from the US system and others will have been overlooked. And maybe there will be another excuse, minority owned small businesses may not have been as "well banked" as others or something and your choice of bank will be another differentiator. I've heard a couple stories of orgs that didn't even get applications from their banks until the fund was depleted. There will be some great success stories too, I'll reiterate that I think the program is based in good intentions. I just can't see it being executed fairly though, not when they're actually debating on whether the Bubba Wallace noose was a "hoax" or not and the president chimes in...
Married couple with up to $150K AGI ($2,400) + 4 dependent children ($500 × 4) is $4,400.
As it is, out of a group of about 50, we furloughed 8, who continued without pay, qualified for unemployment benefits, but retained 100% health coverage. Two have returned to work already and we anticipate being more or less normal again in time to meet the loan forgiveness criteria.
It's good to have the database open to see -- and, hey, to double-check that we actually got it.
noun: loan; plural noun: loans
a thing that is borrowed, especially a sum of money that is expected to be paid back with interest.
In the event that they did/do accept said money they did not earn, and that money was applied effectively and literally saved their asses in an emergency that they were not properly prepared for - they would never forget it and do whatever it took to repay this money that saved their life because they are grateful.
These examples do exist, I know personally know of some and maybe you do too...or not? But that's what I am getting at: everyone has different morals and values. Further, it's helpful to know what those are (when manifested into the form of a corporation) because then we get to make informed choices about who want to work for and with based on value systems. We vote every day with our feet, our dollars, and our attention.
Would I rather work for an employer who did what it took to navigate the Covid shitstorm on their own dime or the one who needed a lifeline and didn't even have the decency to pay back what was never theirs to begin with? Obviously.
Why do you think people are so interested in this data set? Many are acting on this intel in more ways than you think!
On the flip side, the way you "pay it back" to your Noble Investors is to keep the ship afloat and deliver a ROI with a healthy and competent team.
Increasing shareholder value and also doing the right thing and coming up with a way to give our furloughed teammates health benefits during a pandemic was, I suspect, an easy decision for senior staff to make. I'm a lowly scientist, I don't get to make those calls -- but you won't hear me complaining about this course we chose, either.
I don't know about that. Every accountant I knew urged their clients to apply — primarily because there were so many unknowns — at the worst of it, it seemed like things had a sincere chance of degrading into a real doomsday scenario.
I would argue that it would be outright irresponsible for a company to forgo applying for PPP. I wouldn't want to work for an employer who would choose to go against the advice of their financial advisors because they wanted make a point.
It's a slow process (as I've been respectful of the rate-limit on the reverse geocoding API I'm using), but I finished mapping four states and hope to complete the other 46 by the end of this week.
I went and looked, before reading your second paragraph, and the clusters immediately jumped out, and it either seemed suspect or wrong. Then I had to come back here to see why it was wrong.
Cool project though.
You're right that it would be interesting to do analysis on population-adjusted loan amounts for different regions... maybe something like a loan $ per capita map?
What I think would be much more interesting is to see what businesses have physical B&M locations. In other words, cross reference Yelp/Google Places with the legal entity's address. Or maybe cross referenced against unemployment numbers by state/city (if that data exists).
Examples:
All the ones in Ontario, Canada, e.g. Fullmer Construction, are really in Ontario, California.
The Christian Valley School on Artesia boulevard in Alberta was picked up instead of the one in Artesia, CA.
Simpson Labs is geocoded to Valencia, Spain instead of Valencia, CA.
GW Lawrence on Wilson street in Cordoba, Argentina instead of Cordoba, AR.
Is it possible to add a ggogle maps business name listing based on address next to the reported company name?
Nit: what you're doing is geocoding, not reverse geocoding. Geocoding is the process of turning strings into lats/longs. Reverse is the reverse of that, namely lats/longs into strings.
>Philadelphia, to its own credit, is spelled at least 57 different ways in the PPP loan data
(an image is included, with various items, such as "PHIADELPHIA", "PHILADELPHIA,", and "PHILLY")
Pretty well sums up data science. He also notes that Chicago is spelled 31 ways (https://twitter.com/dataeditor/status/1280277322596311041).
But remember where it came from: thousands of lenders hand keying this stuff in with minimal guidance.
> We found 1 loan(s) for Y Combinator Research Inc meeting or exceeding the public reporting minimum of $150k.
> Loan Amount Range $150,000-350,000
> Business Name as Filed Y COMBINATOR RESEARCH, INC.
Is YC Research an entirely separate entity from YC core?
That said, it's apparently no longer associated with Y Combinator, and goes by OpenResearch now[2].
[1] https://www.guidestar.org/profile/81-0861414
[2] https://ycr.org/
Also, maybe even funnier, is that the "Ayn Rand Institute" applied for a loan... that's the best thing in the database I've found so far.
edit: https://www.naics.com/code-search/?naicstrms=814110 "Private Households"
https://www.axios.com/paycheck-protection-program-disclosure...
Of particular reference here - startups that laid off employees and /then/ applied for a PPP loan
https://layoffs.fyi/2020/07/06/these-startups-received-ppp-b...
Recruiting and hiring is hard. No one wants to lay people off.
The rules of PPP also require maintaining the same number of full time employees in order to receive full forgiveness. Any company that received funds and then reduced staff will not have full amount forgivable.
Aren't these exactly the companies that SHOULD have received PPP? They were clearly struggling and without the money were reducing head count already.
There is no end in sight to either corona virus or the economic downturn, so it’s just throwing 8 weeks worth of taxpayer money into bad investments. What’s going to happen within 8 weeks to ensure these employees won’t just be let go again?
Because those same taxpayers voted in a government that prohibited many of those businesses from operating.
> There is no end in sight to either corona virus or the economic downturn, so it’s just throwing 8 weeks worth of taxpayer money into bad investments. What’s going to happen within 8 weeks to ensure these employees won’t just be let go again?
The purpose of the funds isn't to prevent future unemployment. It's to funnel funds to individuals who would otherwise be unemployed. The funds can only be used for payroll to be forgiven. So this is an unemployment payout by other means, in addition to the federal unemployment benefits that were expanded.
> The funds can only be used for payroll to be forgiven.
That an odd way to say up to 25% of the loan can be used for non-payroll expenses like business rent...why are businesses getting loans to pay rent if it’s about employees? Employees didn’t get money for rent.
If it was truly about “funneling funds to individuals” they could have just done that, not given it to businesses first with a 25% extra for non-payroll expenses.
Tax payer do own businesses due process under law and a respect for private property rights. In America, the government can’t seize a business without compensation. Mandatory shut downs, in the absence of financial assistance, is arguably a “taking” under the constitution and a violation of basic inalienable rights we as citizens each have.
As far as 25% being spend on other things. It’s kind of pointless to pay employees but not pay rent, get evicted, and have no place for them to go...kind of defeats the point. A restaurant kind of needs its physical location to operate and offer people jobs.
This isn’t about “funneling funds to individuals” that’s what unemployment insurance and stimulus checks were for. This was also about saving businesses so we don’t enter a depression.
False, government does this to businesses all the time and compensation isn’t due. Take hurricanes in Florida and mandatory shutdown/evacuation orders, there is no promised compensation.
Besides under imminent domain cases, I’d like to see some case law to support taxpayers bailing out businesses.
The existence of imminent domain proves my point, there are circumstances where tax payers owe An obligation to property owners and their actions are restricted by that obligation. Now we can argue about whether this specific act is a taking but I destroyed your blanket argument that tax payers don’t own business anything.
Own a business with a plot of land, tax payers want to expand a road and tear down your office and take the land? Can’t do it without paying.
Again feel free to cite any law supporting your argument: 1) the shutdown orders were a government taking of private property; And 2.) compensation for a temporary taking.
You missed the entire point of hurricanes, before any damage occurs governments order shutdowns and evacuations, there is no taking and there is no compensation for those shutdown and evacuation orders.
The time between evacuation order and landfall is at most four days. The economic damage from that phase is minor.
There are businesses in some parts of the US that are in their fourth month of being forcibly closed. The situation is not in any way, shape, or form comparable to a hurricane evacuation.
Your point of the hurricane is not persuasive, in that situation, the hurricane does the damage, the government order is ancillary. Here, the shut down order is more of a direct cause in the business harm.
Frame it in the alternative, why should businesses have their property seized by public health orders because the tax payers have decided that is the right social policy? Why should some individuals be deprived of liberty and property?
And no, government ordered shutdowns are not taking of private property, it’s done all the time for Natural disasters And taxpayers don’t bail out the businesses. Not to mention business don’t have “licenses” from the state, they may be incorporated and organized, but that wasn’t a requirement of the PPP loans, independent contractors were eligible and didn’t need a separate business entity to qualify for PPP.
Most states are re-opening, ill-advised or not, and businesses are being allowed to operate again.
It very much does. Amazing how much harder it's to stay in business when your revenue is 0.
I do think that a bunch of this money ended up lining the coffers of businesses that had an "in" with a particular bank or a particularly tax person, just because that's the way these things end up working in practice.
I would have preferred a much more stream-lined European approach combined with much more direct cash to consumers than this roundabout way of doing it, but I don't think it was entirely ill-intentioned. But when you start taking into account executive pay, etc, some of it can start looking pretty shady.
This was a very smart way to bail out banks indirectly
At least PPP did not protect execs, but given that rank and file was saved, the execs got the reprieve too
I wonder how many of them were sitting on millions or tens or even hundreds of millions of deceptively obtained ICO funds at the time they obtained these 'loans'.
E.g. I see at least one that raised over 100k BTC in ICO funding just couple years ago.
So if they had that revenue and also paid payroll to employees in 2019, they would be eligible.
The 2018 ones were screwed though, too far back. They probably exhausted a lot of their runway on marketing and extortionate exchanges.
Blockchain community is unique in that they treat $5-10 million raises as "forever money" for an indefinite time period, when even Series A tech companies would not be expected to last more than 15-18 months.
So there are a lot of misalignments in that sector, which are poorly understood by both the people in the sector, as well as critics outside of the sector.
The issuers themselves often have good legal help and proper accounting, as it is a tricky regulatory environment to begin with, which exacerbates these misalignments with their purchasers and psychological investors.
That hasn't been my experience, instead my experience is that many of these companies went through large numbers of lawyers who told them what they wanted to do would be likely found to be illegal before finding some that would sign off on it.
> "forever money" for an indefinite time period
For the most part this is because they don't deliver anything useful, so they won't get any more (at least not until they spin up a new operation under another name).
Some of the companies I see in that database have principals who are on their third or more failed blockchain/ico and hey have become exceedingly efficient at it.
This is continued because nobody can talk about it as they will immediately get delisted, the community will point fingers at the project team, AND the regulators will view the issuer as promising liquidity which further moves their asset into unregistered securities land, opening them to sanctions for the sale and promotion.
Ultimately the token traders and critics have no clue what's going on and think the founders have to be married to a software project with a runway that lasts forever because software development shouldn't be that expensive.
Yes selling tokens is a viable revenue event, but not a recurring revenue event for that project. So launching new projects is the only way to do that, and prior experience is more important to the actual investors providing the bankroll who make a lot of money putting these together. Many people are buying them for the wrong reasons, and there totally could be a market of the same size of people buying them without an expectation of profit.
It is an entirely viable business to make a website with one button that says "purchase button tokens to vote on the CSS color of this button by staking!", which I think should be recognized.
Even the concept of "failed" is misaligned and more often related to exchange rates and volume of the token, more than whether the team did anything.
There is a whole other market of investors bankrolling the parent organizations that are churning out ICOs, because all they see are highly scalable revenues and a multiple of that.
The people buying them need to be more discerning if they want a different result. Token issuance is primarily a game of entertainment and placating a community, and it should be put in that category. Or the community should be an active participant in making the token more useful and valuable.
They certainly do have employees and would be eligible for PPP. If they lied and are in a game of chronic fraud, now featuring the US Treasury, that's pretty risky!
- more costs for financial aid
- more costs for cleaning and retrofitting facilities
- more costs for experts on reopening safely
- more costs for online education programs (software, training, etc)
- refunds of after-school programs, field trips, etc.
- fewer donations from alumni
The only thing that's really improved is maybe utilities? They 100% would have laid off teachers if they didn't get the PPP. It's ludicrous that people are begrudging schools for using this program exactly as intended.
If you give people at the bottom a choice to not work, by giving them cash directly, then they would have better negotiating power versus employers.
The employers would then have to raise wages, and therefore prices. That means consumers who were proportionally consuming more than others have to consume less as more of the wealth goes towards paying higher wages. And we don’t want that as a society.
So we make the aid contingent upon an employer who might bless you with a furlough so you can collect the temporary generous unemployment, but also yank it away in case your menial work is necessary and they can go back to paying you near minimum living wages.
My point was the argument that the government design PPP as an effort to perpetuate an existing system that reduces employees bargaining power and prefers businesses can’t be supported when the government specifically strengthen employees bargaining power.
The powers that be know that loans obligations have been made that can only be satisfied if labor costs remain contained. Their primary objective is to make sure the mortgages keep getting paid, and paying employees double would endanger that.
An easy illustration is the fact that “essential” employees at much higher risk of getting the virus are getting paid with their old near minimum wage per hour jobs with signs that say “heroes work here”, and their management bosses are working safely at home with minimal risk of covid earning the same pay.
White collar employees continue to earn higher salaries from the safety of their home, and “hero” janitors and housekeepers are getting the same $10 to $15 they received as before, except they get to deal with higher chances of coronavirus.
I suspect what you would find is not some grand conspiracy but emergent properties from competitive forces.
And a lone businessman can’t just pay workers more and make the world right. If I decide to pay people more, and run the numbers and figure out I can afford to spend $5M on a piece of land to develop, and my competitor decides to project paying people much less, they can afford to spend $6M for the same piece of land. So guess which business ends up existing? The one that doesn’t pay higher wages. Same situation with people choosing to shop at stores that offer lower prices.
It would have to be a nationwide effort to transfer wealth, such as UBI or higher minimum wages. Otherwise we keep going as is with an ever widening wealth/income gap.
I just searched my local city and noticed that our (for profit) ambulance service received a loan:
> DIAZ MEMORIAL AMBULANCE SERVICE INC
I definitely don't think they saw the number of ambulance rides go down. And also don't think their profits suffered.
I wouldn't be surprised to learn that emergencies are a small portion of what ambulances are used for, but I don't have access to that data.
I'm friends with an ER nurse and she was saying that the ER was almost completely empty during the first few weeks of COVID-19 because everyone was staying home out of fear.
Covid hasn't been prevalent enough to increase ER visits in most of the country (until now) and other people have been avoiding going to the ER unless on deaths door. Not to mention the lack of driving has probably plummeted car accident rates. I remember reading that organ donors are in short supply.
People who would otherwise have gone to the ER, even if not strictly necessary, were hesitating, "do I really need to go, perhaps not".
And then on the other side, you had people who really _should_ go not wanting to, due to fear.
Both ambulance services in my county were shutting down ambulances and furloughing employees heavily.
-- a paramedic
Probably because there's no way he could possibly know what "business as usual" was for any company where he wasn't employed. He has no idea what each company's financial situation is and is merely spouting cynicism.
I definitely don't think they saw the number of ambulance rides go down.
Is this something you monitor? Is there even a way to do that with a private ambulance company?
Considering the number of medical providers, doctors' offices, and hospitals that had business plummet to catastrophic levels, I think you're imagining things.
I work in healthcare, and just off the top of my head can think of several medical clinics and pharmacies that shut down because of pandemic-induced financial difficulties.
But let’s assume your premise; it’s likely their costs went up dramatically between Personal protective equipment, hazard pay, quarantine procedures for exposed employees etc.
Ambulance services are capital intensive (ie large Debt payments) and low margin. A 20% drop in revenue would bankrupt the company.
I would never announce a financial problem or ever publicly announce employees let go. It would harm my contracts with vendors.
These loans don't cause unemployment. Those same people would be unemployed even if those same businesses didn't apply for the loan.
We are only a few months into a multi year pandemic, so even if a company isn't suffering yet, they most likely will be soon. Getting a loan while it is available to preserve jobs as long as possible as the pandemic gets worse sounds like a sensible and ethical thing to do.
We have 100,000 people dead in this country, million dollar hospital bills for those on vents, and yet the stream of cash continues to flow to those too stupid to save a few months of operating expenses/payroll. What a trash society the US has become.
That's a bit of a harsh take. Lots of businesses took out these loans preemptively because they knew the money would dry up soon. Both the company I work for and our family business had applications ready to go the minute they could be filed because it was clear that the application process was going to be a mess.
I agree with you that the forgiveness should be tied to an ownership stake in the business, and that dispersal of funds should have only happened with demonstrable need of funds. But the people involved knew this was going to be a handout and acted accordingly. Taking these funds is an indicator of good business sense, not poor.
If I was running a business and the government told me it was illegal for me to make money for the forseeable future, I would damn well want them to compensate me for that.
Your underlying point is well made, but it's important to understand the process: The banks issued the loans, but the federal Small Business Association reviewed and approved them.
> yet the stream of cash continues to flow to those too stupid to save a few months of operating expenses/payroll.
You can disagree with the program, but the comment is overly hash, IMHO. As a business owner, I see the program as a lifeline to handle cashflow issues and retain workers. I'm not sure that is a "trash society."
Again, I can't stress how important time was. I study and work in financial engineering, and from what I've seen and directly experienced in the depth of the crisis, we were days from total seizure in the financial system. The only part that was still doing ok was banking (due to what happened after 2008). Adding to that, since it's much harder to just give millions of dollars of loans to anyone who demands than it is to give 2000$ per person through the IRS, you had to have a system to vet, check and analyse claims. That's exactly what banks were able to do almost immediately with minimal adjustments.
I agree that it is far from ideal for the private sector to such a big influence on a public program. But perfect is the enemy of good, especially considering the incredible human misery that failing could've led to.
I also wish they would think about the consequences of no action. They probably don’t realize that cascade bank failures and supply chain disruptions happen fast and become permanent. In March there was a realistic possibility of systematic seizure of finance and the supply chain grinding to a total halt due to lack of financing. How do you stock groceries when they can’t buy inventory?
I would've been okay-ish with the arrangement if there was some narrow qualification criteria like being in the grocery business or medical supply chain, etc.
Fine dining restaurants: not essential Summer camps: not essential Non-profits: not essential Law firms: not essential either!
And yet we paid them millions... _why?_
I picked a random company from the 150k list. A pizza place, around the corner. Been in business since 2007. They received $150,000-350,000. So a place deemed essential by the governor and that's permitted to operate curbside and takeout delivery after being open for 13 years is eligible for 150k? What kind of drugs are we on?
Do you have a better suggestion? I doubt it. There are to many edge cases in business to create a program that will be perfect. So your alternative is to take the risk of mass bankruptcies. If PPP designers and law makers are wrong billions are wasted. If your approach tested and is wrong, the economy is wrecked. Decision is easy when framed that way.
Now I've heard people argue that compensation for lost salaries should've been paid directly to the employees if they lost their jobs. But to put it mildly, recovery and return back to normal would have been extraordinarily harder if most of the non essential parts of the economy don't exist anymore.
The price of letting everything go bankrupt only to reopen from scratch later is enormous and would amount to incredible waste not only of money but also years of work. The 150k may have been way too much for a local pizzeria, but it's better to overshoot than to aim for much better money allocation and risk losing precious time. You have to keep in mind that not only do businesses have to pay back the loans (if the money didn't go to salaries) but also that we will have ample time to take a closer look at each individual claim and punish fraud retroactively. The process is already starting as we can see with the linked website.
At the end of the day, we just couldn't afford to have a better PPP program because no matter how much money we lose on fraud and waste, the alternative would have always been more expensive.
Would you rather have our politicians deciding this?
Meanwhile the government can borrow money at almost negative rates, based on long term tax collections, and arbitrage short term financial harm and need against long term repayment. Seems like a rational thing to do.
This money needed to be added to the economy, and really still does. I think PPP was one such reasonable approach (though much more is needed to save small/medium businesses).
https://pppreport.org/location/CA/CAMPBELL
Most of the rest here look pretty legit as far as I can tell. The carwash got 3 loans which seems a little fishy? but to be fair they are a very busy one with a lot of employees.
https://pppreport.org/company/o+reilly+media+inc
They seem like a company where most people can work from home.
EDIT: I totally forgot about their conference business. That makes more sense.
That's probably true, but the PPP loan covers economic impacts as a result of COVID-19, which can be things like "nobody wants to buy our books that are primarily sold as training materials." 340 people might include sales or actual book production, but it's hard to say without more transparency what the money actually went to/for.
Linked from this page: https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/cares-act/assistance...
You'll need to click on the ID link and then click to see the loans from that institution - e.g. from https://sba-loans-covid-19.datasettes.com/loans_150k_plus/Le...
https://pppreport.org/company/snappy+nails+s+p+a+9+inc
Damn.
How they got that much money in the first place is a definite mystery though.
You can filter by state, city, zipcode, bank, business type, and search by employer name, e.g. https://sba-loans-covid-19.datasettes.com/loans_150k_plus/fo...
You can run your own SQL queries against it. Here's a query I wrote that shows the most common NAICS codes (industry categorization from the census):
https://sba-loans-covid-19.datasettes.com/loans_150k_plus?sq...
You can click through from there to get faceted search of e.g. every loan made to a dentist:
https://sba-loans-covid-19.datasettes.com/loans_150k_plus/fo...
I have full notes about how I built this here: https://github.com/simonw/sba-loans-covid-19-datasette
You ain't seen nothing yet.
And you're already preparing to shift the blame towards the people critical of that approach.
And it still could! I think things will get very dark very fast if Congress doesn't extend at least some of the $600 / week unemployment benefits.
Edit to add: further down the list I am seeing tech co's that actually laid off large % of employees that received millions still.
They probably were not counting on this information becoming public (though it obviously is/should be by default)...any respect I may have had for them is no more. Disgusting behavior.
Full screen - https://www.dannysalzman.com/files/ppp_map_v1
Warning - large file download (128mb) doesn't work well on mobile
-list contains any company with a ticker [current/previous OTC stock or other]
-likely to contain many false associations, but still full of surprises
$NTN, $6.3m Market Cap
$TRNF, $22m Market Cap
$FAT, $40m Market Cap
each received 1-2 million in PPPEdit: I tried accessing some common endpoints like /about to see if there are any unlinked pages, but could not find any. Hence why I asked the question.
Direct link: https://sba.app.box.com/s/tvb0v5i57oa8gc6b5dcm9cyw7y2ms6pp
CNBC article: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/06/coronavirus-stimulus-list-of...
It appears the database may include applicants who submitted partial applications but may not have actually received funds. For example, Index Ventures is in the database but claims they didn't take any loans. From the cnbc article:
> The venture capital firms Index Ventures and Foundation Capital, along with the scooter company Bird, said that they did not apply for the Payroll Protection Program, despite being listed in the database as having been approved for millions of dollars of funds from banks under that federally run program.
My company, a recruitment agency, took 2 to 5 million in these loans and kept me hired . But since my main client kept me hired , the recruitment agency kept paying me. So did this recruitment agency just make 2-5 million in free money - just by proving that they ran my payroll- which they did. because the client kept me hired anyway.
I think there are quite a few companies like this. Hence “money goes to those who least need it”.
If I had implemented the plan, I would have just created a program where the program only covered a % of the wages (say 80% instead of 100%) and mostly only for people who were not able to work. Of course, that brings other problems, but there is a middle ground somewhere in there.
On reflection, though, not so surprising.
Maybe you're thinking the lender field is the category of the company?
Let’s not be so quick to label everything fraud, or greed. Sure some people will misuse funds. But most wont. Most people are good.
Financing for startups has probably totally dried up. I bet a lot of VCs said: "We don't have any more funding for you, but try this approach..." And, they recommended going after PPP and at the same time recommended firing people to slim down the salary burden, but only after the PPP loan was safely in place. That extra time could be a lifeline for a startup.
I think this is what happened to me.
Examples like law firms or physicians' offices. These are relatively small firms with very wealthy principals. They are asking for taxpayer money to maintain their wealthy lifestyles, so they don't have to sacrifice their Bentleys to pay staffers. Examples: Thomas J Henry in San Antonio.
LLCs and franchisees that probably have millions of dollars in holdings and cash, but act under the guise of "small business" because they operate fast food or something.
Religious organizations. It's one thing if something like a local YMCA gets funds, but a church outright getting funds without proving it is going to public services (why don't we just have better public services?) is not proper. Churches already don't pay taxes.
> The Paycheck Protection Program is a loan designed to provide a direct incentive for small businesses to keep their workers on the payroll. SBA will forgive loans if all employee retention criteria are met, and the funds are used for eligible expenses.
https://www.sba.gov/funding-programs/loans/coronavirus-relie...
They only have to be paid back if you end up firing the workers you were supposed to keep employed with the loan. If they stay employed then your "loan" is fully forgiven.
Seems like even if you didn't need a PPP loan for staff, there are opportunities to create a scenario where it appears justified you need to loan to cover employees salaries, then divert the previous capital for your labor to an opportunistic expansion while others are scraping by. You got a large loan, with low interest, during a time period many were struggling. Great way to accumulate wealth.
One way or another the government is going to pay to keep these people employed.
They still have to pay their employees, which is the point of the PPP. Those employees are paid from the funds that come in via donations, which are likely down during the pandemic (especially when many couldn't hold services). Put more simply, their income is down the same way my employer's is, as a result of the pandemic.
> a church outright getting funds without proving it is going to public services
The requirements of the PPP require that at least 60% must go to salaries.
> Churches already don't pay taxes.
Their employees do.
My understanding was that 60% of what you don't have to pay back goes to salary. The money that went to salaries and an additional 67% you just keep. Is that right?
The one comforting limitation was that payroll calculations were capped at $100k. So if you had 10 people with a $250k salary, the maximum loan amount is calculated based on having a salary of $100k.
Although you're allowed to add in the cost of healthcare and 401k contributions without limitation.
I think the $100k cap was quite generous and probably too high.
To see how deep money and time-saving habits run, watch this documentary about Warren Buffet, where he goes to McDonald's and gets a cheap meal. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PB5krSvFAPY (3 minutes in)
I work for a firm where staff took 20% pay cuts, partners took much larger cuts and the principals likely will not be paid at all this year. I had to lay off a dozen people personally. Other firms took similar or more extreme measures. Law firms are getting hit fairly hard like a lot of other businesses. We didn't take PPP funds, but if we did and it saved some of the 70 of my coworkers who lost their job in the worst economy anyone alive today can remember, then I wouldn't feel the least bit guilty about it.
Nobody is buying used Bentley's so I don't know where you get the idea that someone can just liquidate one to pay employees. And why should someone have to liquidate personal possessions to pay someone else anyway?
What franchisee do you know who is sitting on millions in cash? It doesn't work that way. Someone who franchises a fast food place makes an enormous investment, takes a significant risk, works their ass off and then pays substantial fees to the company. These are generally small business owners.
The fact that the fixed expenses during this pandemic did not stop for corporations made the expense of payroll which provided significantly reduced revenue stand out. Even law offices and physicians have very high recurring expenses like insurance that they just can't stop and start on a dime and stay in business. It made no sense to keep people on the books until PPP gave a compelling reason to do so. It isn't about 'keeping a wealthy lifestyle' as much as 'keeping a functioning business' a lawyer or physician with no practice is just as much a drag on the economy as anyone else.
You get that they'll keep the Bentley's and they just won't pay staffers? This program was the easiest way to keep people getting paid.
> LLCs and franchisees that probably have millions of dollars in holdings and cash,
Your "probably" is doing a lot of work there. You don't really have any idea. But the issue is you wan't "wealthy" corporations to bear the brunt of the economic shutdown. But why single them out? The PPP is an imperfect and blunt way to socialize the costs of the shutdown.
The former I can shrug off as insignificant, the latter is mildly terrifying and makes you wonder how the hell we can trust anything the government does when they can't even take care of keeping track of triple billons of dollars of other people's ... namely, people who did not get any stimulus ... money.
But I guess the bureaucrats and kleptocratic government must have been ramping it up after the billions upon billions they "lost" in Iraq without a trace. This is probably going to turn into politicians and bureaucrats throwing up their hands when companies claim that the information is inaccurate and they owe nothing and the government cannot prove anything, a la, housing fraud.
edit: I swear I can type
Do you mean "over" $150k? Parent's loan was <$150k.
You can get the de-identified data by state for loans under 150k: https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/cares-act/assistance...
https://pppreport.org/about.php > Details for loans under $150,000 remain mostly private, though industry codes and issuing bank details are available.
Looks like even Adult Entertainment businesses got money through Paycheck Protection Program. Example: https://pppreport.org/company/11000+reeder+l+l+c
https://www.natlawreview.com/article/federal-courts-side-str...