The Federal Reserve announced Thursday that it was expanding a major lending program to provide support for businesses struggling to cope with the economic slowdown caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
The Fed said that it was expanding the scope and eligibility of its Main Street Lending Program which is designed to provide up to $600 billion in loans to small and mid-size businesses that have been harmed by the pandemic and the efforts to contain it.
The Fed said it was allowing businesses with up to 15,000 employees and $5 billion in annual revenues to qualify for loans. That is up from earlier limit of 10,000 employees and $2.5 billion in revenue.
The minimum loan size is being reduced to $500,000, down from an original minimum loan size of $1 million.
This support program, one of many the Fed has unveiled over the past two months, is designed to provide businesses with loans of up to four years from banks at below-market interest rates. Unlike a separate program being run by the Small Business Administration, the loans from the Fed must be repaid but payments can be deferred for one year.
Joe Cecela, Dream Exchange CEO, explains how they are aiming to form the first minority-controlled company to operate an exchange in U.S. history. Watch!
A Michigan judge is putting sponges in the hands of shoplifters and ordering them to wash cars in a Walmart parking lot when spring weather arrives. Genesee County Judge Jeffrey Clothier hopes the unusual form of community service discourages people from stealing from Walmart. The judge also wants to reward shoppers with free car washes. Clothier says he began ordering “Walmart wash” sentences this week for shoplifting at the store in Grand Blanc Township. He believes 75 to 100 people eventually will be ordered to wash cars this spring. Clothier says he will be washing cars alongside them when the time comes.
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
