Truth In Lending: The U.S. Small Business Administration’s $24.2 Billion Bad Loan Portfolio | Open The Books Oversight Report
Playing the 'Big Six Wheel' in Las Vegas has better odds than large tranches of the Small Business Administration's loan portfolio ever paying off.
The motto of the Small Business Administration (SBA) is as all-American as apple pie: "The SBA helps Americans start, build and grow businesses." In January of 2012, President Barack Obama elevated the Administrator of the Small Business Administration to a cabinet level position. But proponents of the SBA will be hard pressed to defend some very poor decisions: 160,000 lending transactions defaulted since 2000 with charge-offs on $18 billion in failed lending. In some years, thirty-percent of all SBA lending was charged-off against SBA reserves (taxpayers).
The SBA administration has a goal of ‘zero-subsidy’ – a new ‘self-funded’ lending operation. But, in the latest figures available from the Congressional Research Services, the SBA took nearly $1 Billion in Congressional appropriation.
It's like apple pie and baseball. The U.S. Small Business Administration finances the American Dream... or does it?
Here's a sample of our findings:
- In some years, such as 2007, one of every three SBA loans was "charged-off" against taxpayers.
- The $24.2 billion bad loan portfolio at the SBA (2000-2015) is larger than the annual budgets of 26 states.
- 1.4 million workers were dislocated when they lost their jobs after an SBA backed company went belly-up.
$24.2 billion in failed SBA loans since 2000.
Who did the SBA fund in your ZIP code that "charged-off" their loan?
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