Wall St. For Main St., Released on 9/13/20

Back in March when Congress announced the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) that the Small Business Administration (SBA) would be in charge of giving out hundreds of billions of dollars in loans, it was obvious that there was going to be a lot of waste, fraud, corruption and abuse of the program and loans.

1)Justice Department has charged 57 people with trying to steal $175 million in PPP funds https://finance.yahoo.com/news/justic…
2) Ex-New York Jets WR Josh Bellamy charged in $24 million coronavirus relief loan scheme https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/2…

Why?

Because other large US federal government programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security have well documented cases and public disclosures via US federal government agencies of many billions of dollars per year in waste, fraud, corruption and abuse.

In September 2016, the Department of Health and Human Services sent out a warning that improper payments under Medicaid have become so common that they accounted for almost 12 percent of total Medicaid spending — just shy of $140 billion! https://www.nationalreview.com/2016/0…

In a May 2012 report, FBI Special Agent David Welker said, “The United States spends more than $2.5 trillion on health care annually, and rough estimates indicate that anywhere from 3 (percent) to 10 percent of all health care expenditures are attributed to fraud.”

If you do Welker’s math, the annual cost of fraud ranges from $75 billion to $250 billion. That’s a lot of our hard-earned retirement money.

The Government Accounting Office doesn’t think this estimate is far wrong. It reported that in 2011, Medicare and Medicaid paid an annual $65 billion in “improper payments.” It defines “improper” to include payments that are made in error — not fraud, but wrong just the same.

Jason Burack is an investor, entrepreneur, financial historian, Austrian School economist, and contrarian. Jason co-founded the startup financial education company Wall St for Main St, LLC, to try to help the people of Main Street by teaching them the knowledge, skills, research methods, and investing expertise of Wall Street. You can also find Jason’s work at his blog website at www.jasonburack.com.

  abuse, corruption, Jason Burack, ppp fraud, waste