| The loans from the stimulus package are not issued by the SBA, they are issued by banks and other lenders. There is a lot of confusion now, the loans were only launched yesterday (Friday April 3rd), and most lenders don't even know what the terms are. A business owner I know filed for a loan directly on the SBA website on Tuesday (April 1st), following the SBA instructions. They still haven't gotten even an email back. They started calling banks on Friday and they were either unavailable (branches closed, phone numbers don't work), or they didn't even know how to process the loans yet. Here's a New York Times article from yesterday that shows how messy this is: https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2020/04/03/business/03reuter... Banks are also adding their own conditions, so no one really knows if they will require guarantees or not. According to the SBA website, the loans to cover payroll are forgivable, but it doesn't say if they'll require a guarantee or not to give it out. That seems like it will be up to the banks to decide. At this rate, businesses will be lucky if they are able to get a loan within 30 days. Considering that most businesses barely have about 2 weeks worth of cash reserves and that this whole thing started about 3 weeks ago, it looks like very few businesses will be able to take advantage of the SBA loans and that even fewer will survive. |