Wobbly restart for small business loan program
The federal government fumbled the reboot of the popular Paycheck Protection Program on Monday, with bankers saying just a fraction of loan applications managed to get through a balky system at the U.S. Small Business Administration.
“One banker told me it took three hours to get a single loan application processed,” said Paul Merski, executive vice president of the Independent Community Bankers Association, a trade group that represents 5,000 small and midsize financial institutions. “It was a very frustrating and challenging rollout.
After small businesses snapped up $349 billion in forgivable loans that were initially provided as part of the government’s $2 trillion coronavirus relief effort, Congress allocated another $310 billion to the program. The money is expected to be gone by the end of the week. The first round of funding lasted 13 days.
“Banks have been accepting applications and processing loans since the money ran out in mid-April, so there was a tremendous volume of loans just sitting there, ready to go,” Merski said.
Merski said community banks alone tried to file “hundreds of thousands” of applications Monday, but he said just a “handful” got through. By the end of the day, SBA officials announced that just 100,000 loans had been processed for 4,000 lenders.
“Unprecedented demand is slowing our system response times,” SBA Administrator Jovita Carranza said in a tweet. “Currently, there are double the number of users accessing the system compared to any previous day during the first round of Paycheck Protection Program funding.”
Merski said the SBA’s system is not capable of handling the large volume of applications going into the system. The agency initially allowed banks to submit 15,000 applications at a time, but reduced that to batches of 5,000 later in the day after the system was overwhelmed.
“They are the volume in one day that they usually do in a year,” Merski noted.
Merski said lenders worked through the night, hoping the flood of funding requests would subside at some point.
“Bankers were sitting in front of their computers, refreshing every 15 minutes to try to get into the system,” Merski said. “But they had very little success. Some banks weren’t able to get any applications through. Others had 500 applications, and maybe got 50 processed.”
— Minneapolis Star Tribune
Trump to order meat plants to stay open amid pandemic
President Donald Trump plans to order meat-processing plants to remain open, declaring them critical infrastructure as the nation confronts growing disruptions to the food supply, a person familiar with the matter said.
Trump plans to use the Defense Production Act to order the companies to stay open, and the government will provide additional protective gear for employees as well as guidance, according to the person.
Trump signaled the executive action at the White House on Tuesday, saying he planned to sign an order aimed at Tyson Foods Inc.’s liability, which had become “a road block” for the company. He didn’t elaborate.
The order, though, will not be limited to Tyson, the person said. It will affect all processing plants supplying beef, chicken, eggs and pork.
The White House decided to make the move amid estimates that as much as 80% of the U.S. production capacity could shut down.
Illnesses in the meat-processing industry and shifts in demand as restaurants have closed have disrupted the food supply chain in recent weeks. Dairy farmers are dumping milk that can’t be sold to processors, broiler operations have been breaking eggs to reduce supplies and some fruit and vegetables are rotting in fields amid labor and distribution disruptions.
Many low-income Americans, meanwhile, have been waiting in long lines at food banks, which have reported shortages.
— Bloomberg News
Comcast extends policy not to disconnect service or charge late fees to June 30
Cable TV and internet company Comcast announced Monday that it will extend through June 30 a policy of not disconnecting service or charging late fees during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The policy was first announced March 13.
Among the steps the company has taken:
• Comcast will not disconnect a customer’s internet, mobile or voice service, and the business will waive late fees if the customer contacts the company and says they can’t pay their bills during the period. Flexible payment options are available.
• WiFi hotspots in business and outdoor locations across the country will be available to anyone who needs them for free. For a map WiFi hotspots, go to www.xfinity.com/wifi.
• Although the majority of customers do not come close to using 1 terabyte of data in a month, data plans are being paused to give all customers unlimited data for no additional charge.
• Internet Essentials, Comcast’s low-income internet program, is offering 60 days of complimentary service for new customers through June 30. It is normally available to all qualified low-income households for $9.95/month. For more information, visit www.internetessentials.com.
— The Olympian
Stressed-out Americans are more worried about money than health
The coronavirus pandemic is causing Americans to worry more about their finances than health, according to a study by MetLife Inc., the largest U.S. life insurer.
Money was the top concern for 52% of full-time U.S. workers, compared with 44% who were most anxious about physical and mental health, according to a survey of 2,367 respondents polled in early April. About 29% of workers are earning less as a result of the pandemic, while 74% said their job status had been affected, or was expected to be.
“The coronavirus is clearly contributing to employees’ overall stress, especially as it relates to their financial well-being,” said Todd Katz, executive vice president of group benefits at MetLife. “This is particularly true among those with incomes below $50,000, and those in health care.”
Two out of three employees reported feeling more stressed than before the pandemic began, including 72% of women and 61% of men, according to the survey.
Employers who have stepped up to support their workforces earned high marks. The survey found that 66% of employees felt valued and appreciated at their jobs at the start of the month, jumping from 56% before the virus spread across the U.S.
— Bloomberg News
FDA urges manufacturers to make hand sanitizer taste worse
Far too many Americans, most of them children, have been ingesting hand sanitizer and other potentially toxic disinfectants since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
According to the FDA, calls to the National Poison Data System increased 79% in March 2020 compared to the same time last year, and to bring those numbers down they’re asking manufacturers to make hand sanitizer less appealing to the taste buds.
An advisory released by the FDA on Monday encourages makers of hand sanitizer to add denatured alcohol, which tastes bitter, to their products in order to make children (and some adults, one supposes) less likely to ingest them. The FDA noted a case they saw this month, in which a 13-year-old drank hand sanitizer that was made by a distillery and packaged in a liquor bottle. The sanitizer was not denatured, the agency said, and tasted like regular drinking alcohol —not how you’d want it to taste if you want to keep consumers safe.
With so many new manufacturers popping up to meet demand for sanitizer, the FDA is also sending warning letters to companies who make misleading claims about the effectiveness of their products —for example, one that says it can “protect you from pathogens up to 24 hours or for 10 hand washes.” The agency emphasized the importance of proper labeling for both child safety purposes and so that customers don’t get a false sense of security from products that overpromise on their virus-fighting abilities. The labels could be beneficial in combating the misinformation about sanitizer and other disinfectants, including the suggestion from President Donald Trump last week that they could be injected to fight coronavirus.
— New York Daily News
