Admin. Seeks Rate Hike for Disaster Loans

[deadparrot]

WASHINGTON - Facing budget pressures, the Bush administration is seeking to markedly increase the interest rates that small businesses and homeowners pay for government-backed loans designed to get them back on their feet after disasters.

The Small Business Administration, already under criticism for its handling of such loans after the Sept. 11 attacks and Hurricane Katrina, is raising new concerns in Congress with the interest hike proposal.

The agency wants a new formula that, if implemented today, would raise the disaster loan interest rate for homeowners from its current 2.68 percent to more than 4.5 percent by pegging it to Treasury bill rates.

The increase, which would kick in five years after checks are cut, would cost homeowners nearly $10,000 more over the life of a 30-year, $100,000 loan. Administration officials said the change would not affect loans taken out before October 2007.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060208/ap_on_go_ot/disaster_rates

[Rose Siding]

1. Each of their schemes is more obscene than the last

[mike_c]

2. meanwhile, it costs $100,000/minute for the clusterfuck in Iraq...

...with no end in sight.

[SpiralHawk]

3. meanwhile, the USA is technically bankrupt

until the Repubs get around to jacking up the "Debt Cieling" a little higher.

VooDoo Economics - Republinomics = one and the same

[OneBlueSky]

6. yup . . . borrowing to pay the interest on your debt is . . .

by definition bankruptcy . . . and then making payments on the debt (when so inclined) with newly minted dollars that aren't worth the paper they're printed on . . .

[rodeodance]

4. trying to squeeze juice from a dried beet!

[Vidar]

5. They should be interest-free. It's our fucking government.