Monday, July 12, 2021

The SBA and promontory

promontory

PROM-uhn-tor-ee, -tree

 

1. A point of high land projecting into a body of water.

2. A projecting part of the body, for example, of a bone.

 

From Latin promontorium, alteration of promunturium from prōminēre, to jut out

 

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TIP OF THE WEEK

 

A promontory is just the kind of thing a heroine will threaten to throw herself off of if the love of her life does not return to her.

 

Borrowers and lenders feeling no love with a SBA guarantee should consider a guarantee from the California Infrastructure and Economic Development Bank.

 

Their Small Business Loan Guarantee Program has now increased its guarantee to $2,500,000.

 

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Indices:

PRIME RATE= 3.25%

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SBA 504 Loan Debenture Rate for July

 

For 20 year debentures, the debenture rate is only 1.22% but note rate is 1.24% and the effective yield is 2.69%.

 

For 25 year debentures, the debenture rate is only 1.40% but note rate is 1.42% and the effective yield is 2.817%.

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AHEAD OF THE YIELD CURVE

 

 

Jobs increased 850,000 in June.

 

Or did they?

 

Local, state and private education added 269,000 jobs but those advances represented a quirk of Labor’s seasonal adjustments.

 

State and local education hired fewer people for the past school year given Covid restrictions, and laid off workers earlier than normal due to school closures. Typically, this sector sees layoffs in the summer, when fewer school employees are needed. But since the numbers were already low due to earlier layoffs, there were fewer people to let go.  The increase in jobs, therefore, is partly a reflection of the fact that fewer people were laid off, not that more were hired.

 

But this is a seasonal quirk - there were actually 413 thousand education jobs lost in June, but that was fewer than normal for June, so seasonally adjusted this showed a gain.

 

No matter the actual number, the U.S. has recovered 15.6 million, or 70%, of the 22.4 million jobs lost last spring, leaving the nation 6.8 million jobs below its pre-pandemic level.   To put that in perspective, 8.7 million jobs were  lost in the Great Recession of 2008-2009.

 

Minutes from last month’s Federal Reserve meeting on monetary policy showed policy makers remained cautious about the economic outlook and willing to remain patient about making any changes to interest rate policy or their asset buying program.

 

Long term treasury bonds reflect a propitious propensity.

 

Keep your eyes and ears open for this week’s auction of 30 year Treasury bonds.

 

Here is what the 30 year Treasury bond has been doing and this week’s interesting little table:

 

2006- 4.91

2007- 4.84

2008- 4.18

2009- 3.89

2010- 4.61

2011- 2.89

2012- 2.77

2013- 3.25

2014- 3.97

2015- 2.91

2016- 2.32

2017- 3.16

2018- 3.13

2019- 2.594

2020- 1.216

2021- 2.172

 

What does all this mean?

 

At last month’s auction, the high yield was awarded at 2.172 percent, down 22.3 basis points from May’s auction rate and the lowest rate awarded for the bond in four months.

 

Since then the 30 year Treasury bond yield has drifted down to 1.987%.

 

Prognostications proliferate over the protean slope of the yield curve.

 

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OFF BASE

 

The classic example of promontory in literature is from John Donne; Devotions upon Emergent Occasions; 1624:

 

“No man is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.”