A couple weeks back I almost bought a new Ford Transit Connect until they pulled the 0% financing on that model and killed the deal. I’d have been happy to pay cash with an equivalent rebate of equal value, but none was offered. Why was Ford, with over a million unsold cars in inventory and sales halved, unwilling to deal? Then I read how the Federal Reserve had bought $8,000,000,000 in Ford’s junk bonds at 9%, which promptly got further devalued on the secondary market. WTF?
So as a ticked off shareholder I listened to Ford’s annual meeting last week, hoping for a morsel of truth to escape Ford’s tight grip on information. Sure enough, Ford bragged that they’d helped 90% of their dealers apply for the forgivable loans ostensibly reserved for small businesses. Yup, those same loans that thousands of real small businesses that had suffered legitimate losses from the pandemic were unable to be obtained were being hogged by Ford dealers, many of whom had multiple dealerships but cheated the system by applying for each dealership separately.
It gets worse, and Ford ain’t the only guilty party… Multi dealership owners selling several makes helped themselves to our treasury. This despite the fact that in some areas of the country dealers did near normal business volumes, especially if they had a lot of fleet sales and were in areas less affected by the pandemic. Not so small businesses in all sectors of the economy joined in raiding the wide open treasury, Here's a list of just publicly traded corporations that ‘fessed up to accepting PPP loan/grants- Some are truly deserving, but a lot suffered little loss and just grabbed us taxpayer’s $$$ because they could. Worse yet, like every other program the Trump administration runs, it’s on the “honor system”…
So while “small” big business owners pad their profits with our tax dollars, legit small business owners are losing their life’s savings while going broke, bankrupt, evicted, and hungry!