If you know of a better way to spread 600 billion amongst 5-10 million small businesses without going through the local banks these businesses use please share with the class?

It seems apparent that the government could’ve distributed these loans to qualifying businesses if they wanted to. The government was able to distribute individual checks to people. It does not seem far fetched to extend this to business accounts.

Maybe someone else can describe technical blockers as to why the government couldn’t have done this. It seems mostly political.

The banks have a preexisting relationship with these businesses and know what they would need / qualify for. Plus provide boots on the ground for vetting.

The best the government could do was send a paltry check to pretty much EVERY american. I'm sure you'd object if they decided to send 1 million dollars to EVERY small business.

That's the best a fed government run program could accomplish with only a couple of weeks.

> The banks have a preexisting relationship with these businesses and know what they would need / qualify for. Plus provide boots on the ground for vetting.

Seems to me that the government has a comparable relationship with business. Companies report to the IRS same as individuals, and corporations are required to file annual reports with their state. You’re telling me they cant maybe slice up the market due to higher or lower risk (restaurants probably taking a way bigger hit than tech, for instance) and qualify companies according to trends in their tax filings and other data points?

Its not necessarily a question of what they could do. Its an emergency and time was valuable.

Banks have thousands if not millions of employees capable of performing basic due diligence before sending out money. A fed task force tasked with processing applications from millions of businesses would be capable of handing out money maybe summer 2021

> 5-10 million small businesses

Seems quite a small number, and easy to do from the tax-collecting databases.