Article

Investigation of Department of Ag's loan programs

Posted by Ed Morrison.

PublicCategorized as Public, Innovation.
Tagged with policy, rural

The Washington Post has been conducting a year long investigation into programs administered by the Department of Agriculture. 

This morning, they published an article that explores the business development financing programs of the Department. 

Since the 1970s, the loan program has endured nearly $1.5 billion in losses while backing almost $14 billion in guarantees to private banks, a Washington Post investigation found.
Actual losses are almost surely higher, according to a Post analysis of thousands of USDA loans and grants. USDA officials refuse to disclose losses on loans to individual companies, even after they go out of business, arguing that it "could substantially harm" the companies' competitive positions. 
 Read more here. 

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  1. Sandy Maxey said  

    This situation is one effect of outdated, inefficient anachronistic rural development policy. The worrisome aspect  of this is that the USDA is truly one of the few sources of federal rural development funding- I can see attempts to eradicate this type of funding, rather than using this report as a starting point for a conversation about rural development and funding. I've yet to see the type of public dialogue to address this.

  2. 40503_32x32_thumb Ed Morrison said  

    Sandy: 

    What steps could we take here at EDPro to further the debate. I agree with you. Additional budget pressures might end up reducing these programs rather than reforming them. 

    I know folks at the Purdue Center for Regional Development are very interested in these issues.  

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