The Washington Post's Kimberly Kandy has a great piece on the agonizingly inane small business loan program that was attached to the federal stimulus bill. Typically, the Small Business Administration guarantees to banks that make small business loans 75 percent of that loan. Typically, about 10 percent of the participating small businesses default on the loan. The stimulus bill, though upped the ante by including $255 million for SBA to 100 percent guarantee bank loans to small businesses. So far 60 percent of the participating small businesses have defaulted on their loans. Kandy explains how these extremely costly small business bailouts made the stimulus bill:

It's encouraging to read about steps finally being taken by the Obama administration to encourage lending to the nation's small businesses, as David Cho reports in the Washington Post.  The idea, which Obama has submitted to Congress, is to encourage smaller banks to lend to small businesses by offering ...

Cedar Rapids, Iowa, which experienced major flooding in August 2008, has gotten less help from the government than citizens believe the region is due, according to this report by Susan Saulny of the New York Times, which includes the following poignant words from a local government official: “We really feel ...

Every recent president -- Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and now Barack Obama -- talk about how neat small businesses are, and create tax incentives and lending programs to stimulate small-business growth. But a Government Accountability Office report released today tells a different story: the Small Business Administration's biggest ...

The Washington Post's Carol D. Leonnig reports that federal agencies have combined to give about $5 billion in government contracts set aside for small businesses to actually very, very big businesses. Corporate giants like Lockheed Martin and SAIC are getting million in contracts from agencies like the Dept. of ...

New kid on the block ProPublica has had an excellent article up by Matthew Schwarzfeld about uber-contractor Blackwater winning deals from the Small Business Administration. The SBA's Inspector General found that Blackwater was able to win $100 milion worth in contracts ...

The Small Business Administration canceled 8,000 loans to hurricane victims without notice to the borrowers.  When the borrowers sought an explanation, they were told, according to Ron Nixon of the New York Times, “that they had voluntarily given up their loans,” which was not true.

Why this fiasco?...

Interviewed in the New York Times, administrator of the Small Business Administration Steven Preston said that “the budget we have allows us to fulfill our mission, and within that budget we are going to be a much more effective and . . . efficient agency at performing what ...