TREASURY DEPT. TOTALLY BLEW IMPLEMENTATION OF SBLF, GAO CONFIRMS

I’m not the only one complaining about the way the Treasury Department carried out the fiasco that was the Small Business Lending Fund. The GAO wasn’t thrilled, either:

Lack of clarity about the requirements for the Small Business Lending Fund that was established last year by the Small Business Jobs Act led to confusion among both lenders and borrowers alike, according to a new government report.

The report, released Wednesday by the Government Accountability Office, found that many applicants were not notified for months that their loan applications had not been approved and hundreds of applicants did not know about rules against restrictions on paying dividends. Few banks even applied for the program because they did not expect demand for small business loans to increase.

The SBLF ended up being a colossal waste of time. Recall that the fund was authorized to invest up to $30 billion in community banks, but ended up doling out just $4 billion. Of 935 bank applicants, just 332 were approved. The reason the program was such a bust, the GAO now confirms, is that the Treasury Department didn’t have a clue about what it was doing. Your government at work. . . .