How Did Big Banks Dispense Taxpayer-Backed Covid Loans?

Sonali Kolhatkar speaks with David Dayen.

After weeks of refusing to release the list of taxpayer-backed loans through the Paycheck Protection Program the Small Business Administration under the US Federal Treasury this week made public the hundreds of thousands of companies that applied for and received loans to survive the coronavirus-related economic disaster.

The loans were administered by banks, many of them big banks, that favored big clients over smaller ones even though the program was ostensibly aimed at small businesses.

Although tens of millions of jobs were apparently saved through the PPP program, millions of Americans remain jobless.

Meanwhile, the media has focused on how large corporations, publicly-traded firms, politically connected companies, and even some anti-government groups received loans.

Read David Dayen’s article, ‘The PPP Witch Hunt is Misplaced,’ HERE.

David Dayen is the executive editor of The American Prospect. His work has appeared in The Intercept, The New Republic, HuffPost, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and more. His first book, Chain of Title: How Three Ordinary Americans Uncovered Wall Street’s Great Foreclosure Fraud, won the Studs and Ida Terkel Prize. His latest article in The American Prospect is called “The PPP Witch Hunt is Misplaced.”

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