That bank currently has a portfolio of more than $3 trillion in loans, the bulk of them to about 8 million homeowners and 40 million students, the rest to a motley collection of farmers and fishermen, small businesses and giant exporters, clean-energy firms and fuel-efficient automakers, managed-care networks and historically black colleges, even countries like Israel and Tunisia. It has about 120 different credit programs but no consistent credit policy, requiring some borrowers to demonstrate credit-worthiness and others to demonstrate need, while giving student loans to just about anyone who wants one. It runs a dozen unconnected mortgage programs, including separate ones targeting borrowers in need, Native Americans in need, veterans in need and, yes, Native American veteran borrowers in need. Its problems extend well beyond deadbeat shipbuilders. That bank, of course, is the United States government—the real bank of America—and it’s unlike any other bank. For starters, its goal is not profit, although it is profitable on paper, and its loans are supposed to help its borrowers rather than its shareholders, better known as taxpayers. Its lending programs sprawl across 30 agencies at a dozen Cabinet departments, with no one responsible for managing its overall portfolio, evaluating its performance or worrying about its risks. The closest it gets to coordination is an overwhelmed group of four midlevel Office of Management and Budget employees known as “the credit crew.” They’re literally “non-essential” employees—they were sent home during the 2013 government shutdown—and they’re now down to three, because their leader is on loan to the Department of Housing and Urban Development. When I suggested to OMB officials that the crew seemed understaffed to oversee a credit portfolio 25 percent larger than JPMorgan Chase’s, someone pointed out that it’s hiring an intern. These unregulated and virtually unsupervised federal credit programs are now the fastest-growing chunk of the United States government, ballooning over the past decade from about $1.3 trillion in outstanding loans to nearly $3.2 trillion today. That’s largely because the financial crisis sparked explosive growth of student loans and Federal Housing Administration mortgage guarantees, which together compose two-thirds of the bank of America. But even after the crisis, as a Washington austerity push has restrained direct spending, many credit programs have kept expanding, in part because they help politicians dole out money without looking like they’re spending. In 2012, Congress boosted funding for a transportation loan program called TIFIA eightfold, while launching a similar initiative for water projects called WIFIA. There’s now talk of a new credit program for public buildings—naturally, BIFIA. Read more: politico/magazine/story/2015/01/federal-loans-bank-of-america-113920.html#ixzz3O37hLigW
Posted on: Tue, 06 Jan 2015 13:54:30 +0000
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