Not to mention that low interest loans are sort of predatory in this context, despite being lower than market rate interest rates. I understand that they have a profit a motive, but it doesn't make them the "good guys" in this scenario. There really are no good guys during a government shutdown.

> There really are no good guys during a government shutdown.

The Canadian air traffic controllers who sent a bunch of pizzas to their American counterparts were pretty good.

Also I would argue that people who keep reporting for work when they aren't getting paid and doing their job to the best of their ability aren't too shabby either, no matter what the pundits say about how prepared they should have been.

Seriously, I'd imagine most of the people impacted who need the loans don't necessarily have the income to cover an extra loan payment when this is over.

First two results returned by searching for "federal shutdown loan" show 0% interest loans:

https://www.navyfederal.org/about/government-shutdown.php https://www.interiorfcu.org/resources/government-shutdown/

I don't see how is it predatory.

Considering that it costs bank about 2% to borrow money this is borderline charity.

Those are credit unions aimed at federal employees. Which means that a large chunk of their ownership is people affected by the shutdown. That’s not charity so much as helping themselves. Which is still great, obviously, but I wonder how it is for affected people who don’t belong to federal employee credit unions.

Chase and Citi have similar programs as well:

https://online.citi.com/JRS/pands/detail.do?ID=USGovShutdown...

https://media.chase.com/news/chase-assists-federal-employees...

It's one of those cases when every dime in interest will cost you a dollar in reputation.

Several banks are offering zero percent interest loans. Cheap advertising perhaps, but not predatory loans.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/18/here-are-the-banks-and-credi...

kinda depends on the interest rate... look at it as an insurance for the bank against some of the people defaulting on the loans and it isn't predatory.

One of the "no good guys" is used to not paying employees. So there is no good and worse guys.

This feels like disaster capitalism. They are inflating their image by saving the day when it is a responsibility of the state to ensure this doesn't happen and to not use shutdowns as a negotiation tactic. If anything they are just prolonging people getting angry enough to do something about it.

If not agreeing to a deal can't be used as a negotiating tactic, what can be?