Massachusetts agencies already make small-biz loans Deval’s proposing
Gov. Deval Patrick emerged from his economic summit this week touting a plan to create a new small-business loan program - but the state already has at least two agencies that do the same thing.
A Herald review of government agencies and programs turned up the state’s Capital Access Program and the Community Development Finance Corp., both taxpayer-backed entities designed to boost lending to small firms in need of capital in almost exactly the same way the governor is proposing. A top Patrick administration official said yesterday there could be as many as eight other similar programs.
At what point do we stop and say, you know what, that was a great idea but, sadly, it just doesn't work? How many hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars do we throw at the problem the exact same way before we walk away from that approach? It's not working. Let's take a different approach rather than trying it again, only harder. Hmmm. Come to think about it, that seems to be the Bay State's approach to another thorny problem, doesn't it? Now if only there were a marginalized constituency to throw to the wolves here, they might just have something.
You want to hear the scariest part?
Still, Bialecki said yesterday, the administration wants to create a new fund that would pool money from a number of public and private sources and make direct loans to firms based on future growth, not on what their current income allows.
Read that again. They want to base loans on "future growth". In today's unsteady economy, they want to make loans based not on what the company can afford to pay back, but based on what they might be making sometime in the future. Hmmm. This sounds nothing like the "interest-only" loan debacle that torpedoed the home mortgage industry, right? I wonder what basis they're going to use for "future growth"? Something tells me the model will look more like Enron than Morgan Stanley.
But hey, we're doing what feels good, right? That's what matters these days - not results, not actual hard-and-fast accomplishments...
That is all.
3 comments:
Not that those loans would go to politically connected friends or anything....
And of course, they would all be accountable.
Let's see, we can't even account for how many freaking agencies there are, and they will keep great track of the dough.
....and all thoose newly laid off state empolyees will need to go somewhere for a job.
Well, sure. It goes along with awarding the Nobel for goals not accomplished yet. I see no inconsistency here.
(WV: pupboar. LOL)
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