The Finance 202: Trump administration is struggling to distribute coronavirus stimulus money to people and small businesses

THE TICKER

You might assume a federal government already running trillion-dollar deficits amid an economic expansion would have an easier time giving away money in an emergency.

But the Trump administration is facing stiff challenges on multiple fronts as it seeks to hand out cash to people and small businesses, the cornerstone of its plan to stabilize an economy in free fall because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Speed is of the essence. Bills are piling up for millions of suddenly unemployed Americans and businesses forced to shutter. Yet the task is straining an understaffed bureaucracy struggling to design and deploy systems on the fly for delivering some $600 billion in cash and loans as part of the broader $2.2 trillion rescue package.

An about-face by the Treasury Department on Wednesday illustrated the seat-of-the-pants nature of the federal effort. In the face of bipartisan blowback, the Internal Revenue Service reversed a decision that Social Security recipients who don’t typically file a tax return would need to submit one in order to qualify for $1,200 relief payments.

“Criticism poured in after the IRS posted a notice on its website on Monday instructing Social Security recipients who do not normally send in a return to file a ‘simple’ tax return, which would be available soon,” The Post’s Heather Long reports. “More than 15 million Americans on Social Security do not file an annual tax return because their income is so low, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

“Forty-one Democratic senators sent the White House a letter Wednesday asking why the Trump administration is placing this ‘significant burden’ on senior citizens and the disabled. GOP Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri called it ‘ridiculous.’”

The tax agency confronts an even thornier problem as it tries to distribute $250 billion to about 150 million Americans as quickly as possible. “In a matter of days, federal officials must craft a website for some people to enter their banking information, beef up their security so that malicious actors can’t steal sensitive financial data, and brace to be bombarded by questions from Americans who aren’t sure what they’re owed and how to obtain the money,” the Post’s Tony Romm writes.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has pledged most will receive payments within three weeks. And indeed, the IRS will directly deposit cash for taxpayers with bank account information on file with the agency. But that will leave about 70 million Americans — the so-called unbanked and underbanked — waiting potentially much longer for their own share, according to an estimate by Aaron Klein, a former Treasury official now at the Brookings Institution.

“Solutions to these problems abound, if only policy makers would prioritize them,” Klein writes. “The response to COVID is exposing a lot of problems ignored for too long. Add our basic banking and payment systems to this growing list.”

Digital payment companies including Square and PayPal are pitching their wares to Treasury as solutions, Romm writes. Those partnerships are “unlikely” to come to fruition, per Romm, but the IRS is looking to develop a web-based portal to allow those not already in line for direct deposits to register with the agency and speed the delivery of their payments. (See my colleague Jackie Alemany’s write up on one of those efforts).

One former White House economist argues mobile payments may be the best option. Lisa Cook, now Michigan State University professor, noted this week in a post for the left-leaning Washington Center for Equitable Growth that 98 percent of 18 to 29-year-olds have smartphones, as do nearly 75 percent of those earning less than $30,000.

“Mobile payments preserve the value of the per-person amount distributed by the government by limiting high fees associated with using bank alternatives,” she writes, adding the platforms “can get cash out fast, particularly to the most vulnerable.”

The administration is staring down a different challenge distributing $349 billion in loans to smaller businesses to keep them afloat. The Small Business Administration is directing the effort but can’t tackle it on its own. So Trump’s team is moving to delegate the work to the nation’s banks. 

But some big institutions are registering “serious reservations about participating in the scheme in its current form” Reuters’s Pete Schroeder and David Henry report. 

The banks’ concern: “The Treasury Department has said it expects lenders to verify borrower eligibility, and take steps to prevent fraud, money laundering and protect customer information under the Bank Secrecy Act, sources said. Banks are worried they could face regulatory penalties or legal costs down the line if things go awry in the haste to get money out the door, or get blamed for not moving funds fast enough if they perform due diligence the way they would in ordinary times, the sources said.”

A crush of applications already was threatening to “swamp the Trump administration’s effort to speed money to cash-strapped small businesses, complicating hopes of keeping tens of millions of Americans employed” during the shutdown, The Post’s David Lynch writes.

Firms can start submitting applications Friday for loans entirely backstopped by the government. And the feds will forgive loans for those that preserve their pre-pandemic payrolls. “But for the rapid-fire effort to succeed, the government must distribute in a matter of weeks more than 15 times as much money as the SBA issued through its main loan program in all of last year,” Lynch writes.

“Administration officials said they had streamlined the loan application process by abandoning the SBA’s customary requirement for borrowers to post collateral or offer a personal guarantee. Companies with fewer than 500 workers are eligible to participate and can apply by completing a two-page form, which is available at sba.gov.”

As Brian Gardner, managing director at the investment banking firm Keefe Bruyette & Woods, tells Lynch, “I can’t imagine, given the size of the program, that banks are going to be able to get this out as quickly as Treasury wants. But it’s the best option they have.”

MARKET MOVERS

— Jobless claims poised to spike again. “More Americans are expected to have filed for unemployment benefits in the past two weeks than in the prior six months, marking a drastic downshift in the U.S. labor market caused by the coronavirus pandemic,” Sarah Chaney and Eric Morath write. “Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal expect about 3.1 million Americans filed for jobless benefits last week after a record 3.3 million sought benefits two weeks ago as the U.S. shut down parts of the economy in an effort to contain the virus.”

Other estimates are grimmer. Per the New York Times’s Quoctrung Bui: “This Thursday’s number, which reflects claims filed last week, could rise to 5.6 million, according to an analysis of Google search data by the economists Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham of Yale and Aaron Sojourner of the University of Minnesota. Morgan Stanley estimates that claims will rise to 4.5 million in [the] report; Goldman Sachs’s estimate is 5.5 million.”

— Stocks tank: “Stocks descended deeper into their month-long funk as the nation entered one of its most dire periods in memory,” my colleagues Thomas Heath and Jacob Bogage report. “The Dow Jones industrial average sank 973 points, about 4.4 percent, to 20,943 as investors baked in more bad news on the coronavirus front — including grim White House projections that as many as 240,000 Americans could die from the virus. The Standard & Poor’s 500 dropped 113 points, or 4.4 percent, to 2,470. The tech-heavy Nasdaq gave back 340 points, or 4.4 percent, to end at 7,360.”

Dollar gains as global recession looms: “The dollar advanced … with markets bracing for what is shaping up to be one of the worst economic contractions in decades as the world confronts the coronavirus pandemic,” Reuters’s Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss reports.

“The greenback, the world’s leading global reserve currency, rose against the euro, sterling and most other major currencies as selling in global shares highlighted growing risks from the pandemic that has shown little sign of easing.”

Oil bounces back. Bloomberg New’s Sharon Cho and Alex Longley: “Brent oil surged as China planned to start buying up cheap crude for its strategic reserves, while [Trump] said he thought Saudi Arabia and Russia would resolve their differences in the oil price war that has added to the market’s malaise. Futures rose as much as 13% in London as Beijing instructed government agencies to start filling state stockpiles after oil plunged 66% over the first three months of the year.”

U.S. manufacturing contracts: “Manufacturing activity contracted less than expected in March, but disruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic pushed new orders received by factories to an 11-year low, reinforcing economists’ views that the economy was in recession,” Reuters’s Lucia Mutikani reports.

— Fed’s Rosengren says virus will likely hit real estate: “The coronavirus crisis is likely to cut home and office building prices, may lead to a permanent shift in the demand for office space, and could push highly indebted households and companies toward default, Boston Federal Reserve bank president Eric Rosengren said,” Reuters’s Jonnelle Marte reports.

“His remarks in an online event with the Boston Chamber of Commerce offered a dimmer view of the financial challenges posed by the crisis than some of his colleagues who feel that if the health challenge is managed quickly a fast economic rebound will let the economy pick up roughly where it left off.”

CORONAVIRUS FALLOUT

In the United States:

• Pence compares U.S. situation to Italy: “Coronavirus deaths in the United States passed 4,600 Wednesday as Vice President Pence issued an ominous warning that America’s situation is most comparable to Italy’s struggle with the virus, which has pushed that nation’s hospitals to capacity and has left more than 13,000 people dead despite a weeks-long lockdown,” my colleagues Matt Zapotosky, Nick Miroff and Ian Duncan report.
• DeSantis relents as Florida gets a stay-at-home order: “Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) mandated a 30-day stay-at-home order for the state Wednesday, requiring that its nearly 21 million residents stay indoors unless they are pursuing essential services or activities,” my colleagues Fred Barbash and Alex Horton report.
• Social distancing does appear to be working in some places: “The earlier the better, preliminary data from two weeks of stay-at-home orders in California and Washington show,” my colleagues Geoffrey A. Fowler, Heather Kelly and Reed Albergotti report.
• There’s a fight over who should get rapid testing first: “Some White House officials want to ship many of the tests, which were approved Friday and can deliver results in five to 13 minutes, to areas where there are fewer cases, such as rural states and parts of the South,” my colleagues Steven Mufson, Juliet Eilperin and Josh Dawsey report of Abbott Laboratories new method. The White House’s final consensus seems to be that those areas will get the testing.
• Fauci gets beefed-up security: Stronger protection for the nation’s top infectious disease expert Anthony S. Fauci comes as he faces growing threats to his personal safety, my colleagues Isaac Stanley-Becker, Yasmeen Abutaleb and Devlin Barrett report.

Corporate fallout: 

• Treasury picks three Wall Street banks to help with airline aid. “The department is expected to tap PJT Partners Inc., Moelis & Co. and Perella Weinberg Partners,” WSJ’s Cara Lombardo and Lizz Hoffman report. “Each bank is likely to advise on aid to one of three subsectors: commercial airlines, cargo carriers and firms critical to national security, such as Boeing Co.”
• Boeing 737 Max return even more difficult now: “With airlines flying a fraction of their pre-virus schedules and production at many of the planemaker’s own facilities suspended, a small Boeing team has continued testing the latest software changes on the Max,” Bloomberg’s Peter Robison, Julie Johnsson, Alan Levin, and Siddharth Vikram Philip report. A delay would add even more issues to the struggling company.
• Plants emerge as battlegrounds: “Tensions are breaking out between employers and workers across the U.S. as some companies push to keep producing during the coronavirus pandemic and some employees push back over health concerns and other issues,” WSJ’s Alexandra Berzon, Jacob Bunge and Alejandro Lazo report.
• Companies look to cut 401 (k) contributions: “Amtrak, La-Z-Boy Inc., retailer Mattress Firm Inc., and travel tech company Sabre Corp. are among the first in an expected wave of businesses suspending or reducing matching contributions to employees’ 401(k)s …,” WSJ’s Anne Tergesen and Dieter Holger reports.

International fallout:

• U.S. intelligence reportedly concludes China concealed extent of outbreak: “China has concealed the extent of the coronavirus outbreak in its country, under-reporting both total cases and deaths it’s suffered from the disease, the U.S. intelligence community concluded in a classified report to the White House, according to three U.S. officials,” Bloomberg’s Nick Wadhams and Jennifer Jacobs report.
• Chinese province goes back into lockdown: “Henan province in central China has taken the drastic measure of putting a mid-sized county in total lockdown as authorities try to fend off a second coronavirus wave in the midst of a push to revive the economy,” the South China Morning Post’s Guo Rui and Echo Xie report.
• Israel’s health minister tests positive: Yaakov Litzman heads the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party and is a follower of the Gur Hasidic sect. “Figures released on Wednesday by the Health Ministry showed that the virus has spread particularly fast and wide in the country’s ultra-Orthodox community,” my colleague Ruth Eglash reports from Jerusalem.
• Iceland allows anyone to get tested: “They do not need to have recently traveled abroad or have come into contact with anyone diagnosed with the virus. They don’t even need to show any symptoms,” my colleague Siobhán O’Grady reports.

MONEY ON THE HILL

— McConnell pushes back on Pelosi’s plans for “phase 4”: “One week after the Senate unanimously passed a $2 trillion emergency relief bill aimed at limiting the financial trauma from the coronavirus pandemic, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said he would move slowly on considering any follow-up legislation and would ignore the latest efforts by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to jump-start talks,” my colleague Robert Costa reports.

“McConnell’s sweeping dismissal of Pelosi’s urgent call for action underscored the uncertainty and fierce political warfare in Congress as the coronavirus outbreak shuts down much of the nation and throttles the economy, with little consensus on what should follow the biggest rescue package in U.S. history and lingering tensions from those negotiations between McConnell and Pelosi.”

• Key quote: “She needs to stand down on the notion that we’re going to go along with taking advantage of the crisis to do things that are unrelated to the crisis,” McConnell said in an interview with The Washington Post, calling the speaker’s recent comments about a fourth round of virus-related legislation “premature.”

THE REGULATORS

— Fed eases bank capital rules, temporarily. WSJ’s Andrew Ackerman and Ben Eisen: “The Federal Reserve on Wednesday eased rules around how banks account for their supersafe assets, a move meant to boost the flow of credit to cash-strapped consumers and businesses during the coronavirus slowdown.

The Fed said it would exclude for one-year Treasurys and deposits held at the central bank from banks’ supplementary leverage ratio calculation. The ratio measures capital—funds that banks raise from investors, earn through profits and use to absorb losses—as a percentage of loans and other assets… 

“The banks are sitting on giant stockpiles of cash, U.S. government debt and other safe assets. By tweaking how the ratio is calculated, the Fed is effectively trying to engineer a swap. Remove Treasurys and central bank deposits from the calculation, the thinking goes, and banks should be able to replace them in the asset pool with loans to consumers and businesses.”

The move drew criticism from advocates of stricter industry regulation. From former FDIC Chair Shelia Bair: 

TRUMP TRACKER

— Kushner takes leading role in coronavirus response. Politico’s Adam Cancryn and Dan Diamond: “What started two-and-a-half weeks ago as an effort to utilize the private sector to fix early testing failures has become an all-encompassing portfolio for Kushner, who, alongside a kitchen cabinet of outside experts including his former roommate and a suite of McKinsey consultants, has taken charge of the most important challenges facing the federal government: Expanding test access, ramping up industry production of needed medical supplies, and figuring out how to get those supplies to key locations… 

“The behind-the-scenes working group has also duplicated existing federal teams and operations, and its focus on rapid, short-term decisions has created concern among some health-agency officials, according to interviews with 11 people involved in Kushner’s effort, including senior government officials, outside advisers and volunteers on the projects, as well as other health department and White House officials.”

POCKET CHANGE

— T-Mobile-Sprint merger is complete: “T-Mobile US Inc said on Wednesday it officially completed the $23 billion merger with Sprint Corp, solidifying its position as the No.3 wireless providers in the United States,” Reuters’s Arriana McLymore and Diane Bartz report.

— FTC fights Altria’s investment in Juul: “The Federal Trade Commission is suing to undo Altria’s nearly $13 billion investment in the popular e-cigarette maker Juul, alleging that the deal violates antitrust laws,” the BuzzFeed News’s Stephanie M. Lee reports.

“Altria, one of the world’s largest tobacco manufacturers, paid $12.8 billion in December 2018 for a 35% stake of Juul, becoming its largest stakeholder and valuing the San Francisco startup at $38 billion. The FTC’s complaint, filed Wednesday, alleges that the investment illegally eliminated competition between the two companies.”

OPINIONS

CHART TOPPER

See how coronavirus grounded the airline industry: “ According to Aireon, a satellite-based aviation tracking company, there were 37,826 aircraft tracked on November 5, before coronavirus took its toll on international air travel. On Tuesday, however, just 26,217 planes were detected, a drop of 30.7 percent,” my colleagues Andrew Freedman, John Muyskens, Chris Alcantara and Monica Ulmanu report.

Just take a look at just part of U.S. air travel:

The falloff in human activity since the coronavirus struck has had a seismic effect: 

DAYBOOK

Today:

• The Labor Department releases its weekly report of initial unemployment claims
• Walgreens Boots Alliance, Dave & Busters, Carmax and Chewy are among the notable companies reporting their earnings

Friday:

• The Labor Department releases the monthly jobs report

THE FUNNIES

From The Post’s Ann Telnaes:

BULL SESSION