Stuff 'em all: Republicans AND Democrats enabled the PPP chain-feeding bailout debacle.

Spare me.

If you're an indie operator rushing to perform fellatio on Shake Shack -- a $1.6 billion company -- for returning the PPP loan money Republicans AND Democrats bestowed upon it, consider the fine print in the designer chain's mea culpai last week.

Shake Shack was fortunate last Friday to be able to access the additional capital we needed to ensure our long term stability through an equity transaction in the public markets. We’re thankful for that and we’ve decided to immediately return the entire $10 million PPP loan we received last week to the SBA so that those restaurants who need it most can get it now.

Which is precisely what Shake Shack might have done in the first place, seeing that PPP was supposed to be for businesses without financing options like this.

At the end of the week Ruth's Chris Steak House spewed similar bilge during the course of giving back its $20 million. So did an insipid salad chain called Sweetgreen (huh?), Harvard University, and maybe a few others.

The main point: The two-party system is responsible for bailouts that help huge corporate monoliths first, and small indie businesses almost not at all.

And, huge corporate monoliths are greedy bastards that should be eliminated from the face of the earth. Death both to chains and the two-party system.

I hope you enjoyed my TED clenched fist.

White House, GOP face heat after hotel and restaurant chains helped run small business program dry, by Jonathan O'Connell (Washington Post)

With program out of money, backlash prompts executives at Shake Shack to return $10 million loan.

The federal government gave national hotel and restaurant chains millions of dollars in grants before the $349 billion program ran out of money Thursday, leading to a backlash that prompted one company to give the money back and a Republican senator to say that “millions of dollars are being wasted.”

Thousands of traditional small businesses were unable to get funding from the program before it ran dry. As Congress and the White House near a deal to add an additional $310 billion to the program, some are calling for additional oversight and rule changes to prevent bigger chains from accepting any more money.

Ruth’s Chris Steak House, a chain that has 150 locations and is valued at $250 million, reported receiving $20 million in funding from the small business portion of the economic stimulus legislation called the Paycheck Protection Program. The Potbelly chain of sandwich shops, which has more than 400 locations and a value of $89 million, reported receiving $10 million last week.

Shake Shack, a $1.6 billion burger-and-fries chain based in New York City, received $10 million. After complaints from small business advocates when the fund went dry, company founder Danny Meyer and chief executive Randy Garutti announced Sunday evening that they would return the money.

They said they had no idea that the program would run out of money so quickly and that they understood the uproar ...

Last evening following the city council meeting, a friend suggested that one way to minimize the the hospital's effects on city infrastructure, i.e., as a non-profit paying no property taxes and thus not contributing to the cost of city services, would be to have unified city-county government.

This article explains why I disagree with my friend's position.

How Long Before Regionalization Is Rebranded as a Suburban Bailout?

MARCH 29, 2016 BY AARON M. RENN

Back in January Strong Towns ran a great piece by Nathaniel Hood called “This isn’t an annexation – it’s a bailout.”  It’s a short story about a town in Minnesota that’s about to annex a small 1960’s subdivision that somehow remained in incorporated territory for many years.

Greece: The bailout (this is a coup) and Varoufakis's refusal to play by the rules.

Yeah, I'm up early today. This one just came over the wire.

Greece bailout agreement: the key points (The Guardian)

However, it has been pleasing to note the widespread recognition that these past few weeks have been not unlike a war between international bankers and Greek politicians, with the "collateral" damage being suffered by ordinary Greeks with no dog in the fight.

#ThisIsACoup: Germany faces backlash over tough Greece bailout demands (The Guardian)

The draconian list of demands eurozone leaders handed to the Greek government in return for a European bailout has inspired a social media backlash against Germany and its hawkish finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble.

ž#ThisIsACoup was the second top trending hashtag on Twitter worldwide – and top in Germany and Greece – as eurozone leaders argued through the night to convince the Greek prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, to take the deal or face bankruptcy and his country’s expulsion from the euro.

The former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis departed the scene following last weekend's referendum, but to me, the following points remain significant, especially this one:

"Thinking of himself as a representative of the Greek people, he made his wishes public."

Transparency. Imagine that.

The Man Who Refused to Play by the Rules: the Real Sins of Varoufakis, by Chris Bickerton (Counterpunch)

... The negotiations didn’t break down because of an unbridgeable gap between the North and South; creditors and debtors; the German ‘Ordoliberalism’ of Schäuble and Djisselbloem and Greek-style Marxism of Varoufakis and Tsipras. This gap has never existed. They broke down because Varoufakis repeatedly breached the Eurogroup’s etiquette. In doing so, he challenged the very foundations of the eurozone’s mode of governance ...

(the non-democratic Europgroup "rules" are recapped)

... The hostility towards Varoufakis stems from his breaking of all of these rules. He refused to play the Eurogroup game. It’s not really about riding a motorbike, wearing combat trousers and being a celebrity academic-blogger — though his charisma and popularity probably created jealousies amongst the other (colourless and tie-wearing) politicians.

At the heart of the matter is how Varoufakis presented his demands. Thinking of himself as a representative of the Greek people, he made his wishes public, and when in the Eurogroup, he maintained the same stance — changes in views could not be informally agreed around a table but had to be taken back to Athens and argued for, in cabinet and with the Syriza party.