(New York)

Dividends and buybacks have been looking very weak. Many buyback programs have been suspended and are likely to be under political pressure, while dividends are looking very at-risk because of likely poor earnings. So where to get some stable dividends? Barron’s ran a piece picking 40 of the safest dividends in the market. Here is a sampling: Nike, McDonald’s, Target, Home Depot, Coca-Cola, Caterpillar, Honeywell International.

FINSUM: This seems like a sound list. The only argument we might have is that Nike might not be able to maintain the hefty price increases consumers have stomached over the last five years.

One of the big questions in the small business world right now is “where is my PPP loan”. The SBA announced last week that the program had run out of money. Yet, the large majority of small business report that they have not received funds, even those that have been “approved”.

COVID Loan Tracker was founded for exactly this purpose—to find out when money from the PPP program actually starts flowing. The SBA says around 1.7m loans were approved, accounting for only 6.6% of the 30,000,000 small businesses in the country. Yet of the $349 bn “approved”, only about 7% of companies say they have received any funds.

PLEASE HELP SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS BY FILLING OUT THE FORM

As of 7:00 am this morning here is our data on actual disbursements:

Total Applied: 13,428 companies
Total received money: 941 companies
Percent receiving money: 6.97%
Total Dollars received: $320,000,000
Median Employees per successful applicant: 15
Median Loan size: $320,000
Median Length to receive loan: 9 days

COVID Loan Tracker was started by small business owners Duncan and Rita MacDonald-Korth to help their fellow small business owners understand when PPP and EIDL advance money starts flowing. The site works by crowdsourcing knowledge on applications and loan disbursements. Our goal is to help the small business community and empower journalists with the data they need to keep the government accountable.

HELP US KEEP THE DATA FLOWING

PLEASE HELP SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS BY FILLING OUT THE SURVEY

COVID Loan Tracker was started by small business owners Duncan and Rita MacDonald-Korth to help their fellow small business owners understand when and where PPP and EIDL advance money starts flowing. The site works by crowdsourcing knowledge on applications and loan disbursements. Our goal is to help the small business community and empower journalists with the data they need to keep the government accountable.

Retail is one of the largest sectors of the US economy. Tens of millions of workers earn their living in the sector and millions of small business owners employ them. However, this group—at once the most visible and vulnerable victims of the lockdown—are being left out in the cold by the PPP initiative. It has already been well established that “large” small businesses have fared much better in the Paycheck Protection Program, but retail small business owners may have even more to lose.

The common practice in commercial leasing to small businesses in the US is that landlords require tenants to put up personal guarantees in order to execute a lease. That means that if a business is unable to afford the rent, their own personal assets are the on hook to pay the landlord. Small business owners usually have no choice but to accept the terms—if they do not, they cannot lease the space. Since almost all landlords require this, small business owners are left with a stark choice: commit to a personal guarantee, or don’t open a business.

While it is clear at this point that smaller small business owners have not been helped by this program, that is doubly true for retail owners, for whom payroll is usually a minority expense compared to rent, utilities, and inventory. Accordingly, the small shop owners of America—hardware stores, clothing boutiques, nail salons, dry cleaners, cobblers, bar owners etc are at grave risk of losing not just their business, but their own assets, such as savings, houses, future income. They stand to lose everything.

COVID Loan Tracker, a union of over 17,000 small business owners representing billions of dollars in Paycheck Protection Program applications, demands that the federal government increase the funding for PPP to $1tn within 48 hours. 

SUPPORT OUR PETITION

The first round of the Paycheck Protection Program has proven that the initial conception of the distribution of funds was flawed from top to bottom. The program has done very little to help genuine small businesses and instead has benefited large companies who have used subsidiary entities to benefit disproportionately and unfairly. The examples abound. Banks have incentivized large and important customers—those who need PPP money least—at the expense of the backbone of the nation: genuine small business owners, or those who run “small” small businesses and are an intimate part of the communities they inhabit and serve. These are the people whom the program was designed to protect, and those whom have been most failed by it. 93.3% of US small business owners have received no money from the first phase of PPP, amounting to 28,000,000 businesses. This is a wrong that must urgently be made right.

In addition to increasing funding to $1 tn, we propose the following rules:

1. 50% of the total dollars funded through the program must go to businesses with 50 employees or less (with the employee count taken as of February 15th, 2020)
2. The next 25% of the total dollars funded through the program must go to businesses with less than 150 employees (with the employee count taken as of February 15th, 2020)
3. The next 25% of the total dollars funded through the program must go to businesses with less than 250 employees (with the employee count taken as of February 15th, 2020)
4. Businesses with less than 50 employees will have their applications processed first, with applications for funding larger businesses only being approved once the full 50% has been allocated to those businesses with less than 50 employees.
5. Any remaining funding that exists after these disbursements will be allocated to those businesses with less than 50 employees.
6. No entity with any ownership association to any business with more than 250 employees may be given funding.
7. Every lender which takes part in the Paycheck Protection Program must make every effort to process and disburse all loan applications within 14 days of application receipt. Those lenders which are found to be routinely in failure of this standard shall have their processing fees reduced by 50% at a minimum.

This plan will ensure that the small business owners who need this money most—the smallest of small business owners—will get the funding they deserve. These small businesses are the heart and soul of every village, town, and city in this nation. What will our country become if we fail them?

Please back our proposal and help genuine small business owners.

Duncan and Rita MacDonald-Korth
Small business owners and founders of COVID Loan Tracker

This is likely to be the hardest weekend ever for millions of small business owners around the country. The SBA ran out of money on Thursday after just 1.6 million business had loans been “approved”—the vast majority of which have not been paid, according to COVID Loan Tracker. There are 30 million small businesses in this country. Even discounting for shell companies, that means tens of millions of small businesses got nothing from the program and are now facing doom. Forbes estimates the program only funded 5% of small businesses in the country.

PLEASE HELP SMALL BUSINESSES BY FILLING OUT OUT THE COVID LOAN TRACKER SURVEY.

Congress needs to urgently refund the program to help these businesses, but it is also worth noting that there were vast discrepancies in those who received PPP money. “Those who had pre-existing credit relationships with banks did much better”, says Duncan MacDonald-Korth, cofounder of COVID Loan Tracker. “And ‘big’ small businesses are much more likely to have those credit relationships”, he continued. Accordingly, COVID Loan Tracker found that over 81% of those who received PPP had pre-existing lending relationships with small banks! That means the millions of small businesses who fund themselves by making more money than they spend were boxed out of this program.

COVID Loan Tracker was started by small business owners Duncan and Rita MacDonald-Korth to help their fellow small business owners understand where PPP and EIDL money is flowing. We are empowering the business community and journalists with the data they need to keep the government accountable.