AND HOW ABOUT TODAY'S DOSE OF INCREDIBLE IRONY:

"The President is visiting Los Angeles and Bakersfield to tout the success of his economic policies. Los Angeles' unemployment rate is 13% since President Bush took office. The city has lost 53,500 jobs since January 2001, and has added more than 31,000 residents to its unemployment rolls. In Bakersfield, the unemployment rate is 12.8% - up almost 5% since President Bush took office. The city has added more than 4,400 workers to its unemployment rolls since January 2001."

oh, all you doomsayers!

look, i just read that the us. economy is practically STEAMING ahead. why, we added a whole 21,000 jobs in february alone. yowsa!

;-)

Hal-
I'm pretty sure the "holiday" mentioned lasted until January 10th when the program was reinstated. Additionally, the SBA has proposed a bill in congress which would add $3 billion to 7(a) program.

There are at least 13 California counties with unemployment rates of 8.6% and higher, at least two with county-wide unemployment over 12.4%.

I'll try to check on the re-opening of the loans, Joe - it wasn't in the story I had seen.

And apparently there's more to the story. According to Inc. ("the magazine for growing companies"), the administration keeps trying to choke SBA funds:

"For fiscal 2003, the Bush administration had requested only enough funding to guarantee $4.85 billion in 7(a) loans, despite warnings from the lending industry that the program would need twice that amount. For the current fiscal year, the SBA requested only enough money to guarantee $9.3 billion in loans. Bankers warned that demand would rise above $12 billion but were ignored... the 7(a) budget would need only an additional $25 million to $100 million to drive $3 billion more to businesses."

Joe, the program is back but they dropped the loan size cap from $2 million to $750,000 after a strong outcry from lenders and small businesses who had gotten cut off at the hips.

Better than nothing, and the Senate bill would raise the cap back to its original level.

I still think this all indicates a lack of support from the administration.

I'm pretty sure SBA has a web site for more info, I would be curious to see what the bankers get out of the deal. Since its a really a loan guarantee program all the SBA is in essence doing is providing the collateral to back up the loans. I'd be interested in knowing if the banks are truly advocates of the program or if it would really be in the banks interest to put the money elsewhere, where they can get a higher rate of return.

According to Inc. magazine, the bankers whined right along with their customers.

Personally, I would think bankers would be interested in seeing growth in local businesses.

And I would suggest that it's good policy if small businesses really are a "job machine" (which history indicates they are).