WASHINGTON: The White House was due to speak with banks on Tuesday , as the administration's US$350 billion programme to support ailing businesses continued to confront hurdles, with some of the nation's largest lenders sitting on the sidelines and others unable to access the system.
He said lenders are also still waiting for the administration to produce a compliant loan authorisation form which would help speed up the distribution of funds, although he said guidance issued by the Treasury late on Monday night had helped to address some other issues with the programme. Speed is critical, since half of small businesses have less than a two-week cash capital buffer. But the resulting confusion, bottlenecks and technology glitches have sparked widespread frustrations among bankers and businesses alike and left the US Treasury and the SBA scrambling to fix the problems on the fly.
“We are continuing to be inundated with requests," she said, adding that many of those are from companies turned away by their big lenders, including Wells Fargo, which has said it is constrained by a regulatory cap on its balance sheet.