A multi-billion-dollar pandemic-era stimulus program meant chiefly to help small businesses keep staff on the payroll and hire back laid off employees was poorly targeted, with only about one-quarter of the money supporting jobs that would otherwise have disappeared, a new Fed report shows.
Lockdowns and a collapse in consumer spending during the first wave of the pandemic drove fears that America’s small business sector was at risk of a collapse.
This prompted lawmakers in Congress to adopt a series of relief measures, including the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), which directed roughly $800 billion in forgivable loans to small businesses and other organizations hit by the crisis….