You can’t get local news from an ATM

Rather than use the ATM for cash today I went into the bank to cash a check and to say hello to the manager and any familiar tellers.  I asked about the sudden closing of one of the nearby shops.  I got more news than I expected.  I knew the owners and some of the staff of the shop and hadn’t heard as many details.  It was stuff I wouldn’t have seen in the newspaper and I am not going to repeat here.  I did get some information that I could use in planning my future business.

I doubt if I’ll ever need a loan again.  If I do it will be easier and possibly with good terms than if I had just been a number in the system.  Besides the ATM doesn’t give Tootsie Rolls.

"Government-made" billionaire

Hamdi Ulukaya, a Turkish immigrant, started making Chobani yogurt with the help of a Small Business Administration loan.  He bought a Kraft Foods factory in 2005 with the help of that loan, and he began shipping Chobani Greek yogurt two years later.  It is now the best selling yogurt brand in the U.S.  He is now estimated to be worth 1.1 billion dollars.

Of course, the government didn't make him a billionaire.  He and many other people had to do a lot of work to produce and sell all that yogurt.  But could he have started without the SBA loan?  Maybe if there had been a friendly banker who believed in him.  So, the government didn't make him a billionaire, but it certainly gave him a rung or two to start the climb to success.

See "The billionaire behind Chobani", Devon Pendelton, Bloomberg News, Updated 2012-09-25, via Star Tribune.

Something else to consider: was the SBA loan government spending or government investment?  Consider all the jobs that Chobani created and the taxes the employees pay.  Consider how much more taxes Ulukaya paid than if he hadn't been so successful.  Consider how those taxes in turn can be reinvested in education, roads, and loans to other fledgling companies.

Solyndra loan, just the facts, ma'am

The Republicans have been jumping all over the Obama administration for the collapse of Solyndra; Paul Ryan accusing the Obama administration of "crony capitalism".  Guess which administration actually approved the loan?  The Bush administration!  The loan was not actually made until Obama was in office.  See "Clean Energy: Obama Says It's the Future, Paul Ryan Calls It a Fad", Stacy Curtin, Daily Ticker, 2012-08-16.

Meanwhile, the Republicans don't seem to notice the subsidies to oil, gas, coal, and nuclear.

Ryan also said, "We want to get Washington out of the business of picking winners and losers."  He seems to forget that the last great Republican President, Abraham Lincoln, was very much in the business of picking winners and losers and providing subsidies.  What would this country be like if he hadn't pushed the Transcontinental Railroad with "subsidies" of bonds and free land?

BTW: one of the commenters asked where Paul Ryan called clean energy a fad.  Given how quotes of any kind get distorted and go viral, it is hard to find sources for a supposed quote.  What Ryan said was "fads like Solyndra" on "60 minutes" with Bob Schieffer.  I can't find a direct quote from 60 minutes, but dozens of repeats by many sites, each with its own particular bias.

Whatever, the fact is the Bush administration approved the loan.  Now the Republican Party has morphed to promote only fossil fuels and nuclear energy and to disparage any alternate sources of energy.