> I respect your opinion but surprised at your response to not give a 
> commercial beekeeper a LOAN to stay in business!

Maybe a short course in business is in order here.

Bob and I -- and anyone who has run a business -- understands the difference 
between business credit and personal credit.

Personally, I (and I am betting Bob, too) as a business man,  would never, 
if I could help it, borrow money for any personal consumption purchases, and 
that includes cars, houses, etc.

Most people think nothing of it, but those are not earning assets.  They are 
consumption.  Houses and cars are consumables and eventually decline in 
value unless much, much more money is poured in over time to maintain them.

The average wage earner does not understand business and its reliance on 
credit.   Credit is cheaper than equity and allows for larger operations 
than would otherwise be possible in many cases.  Credit is the lifeblood of 
many businesses and [permits getting past short-term bottlenecks and 
financing of expensive equipment over the life of the asset.

A business and its expenses are incurred for purposes of earning more money 
and there are two kinds of loans.  One is for short-term needs like meeting 
next month's payroll because there is a shortfall until the pollination fees 
are collected or the honey sold. The other is to pay for things of enduring 
value which will be paid for as they are used up over time, like bee hives. 
Bees, being livestock fall somewhere in the middle.

 Businesses typically borrow money to operate annually.  Operating loans are 
due *in full* annually and are paid back at least once a year, or else there 
is a long talk with the banker.   The long term money is like a mortgage and 
only a portion plus interest is due annually as the assets age and earn 
income.

The credit system usually works well because it works for everyone, the 
lender and the borrower, however recently, the banks corrupted the system 
and lent money to people who should never have been able to borrow.   As a 
result, they lost a lot of their depositors' money and all of their own as 
well,  if truth be told, because actually banks are very thinly financed 
compared to their liabilities.

The result of this wreck and loss of confidence and destruction of the 
banks' underlying capital, is that money is no longer easy to get even for 
good purposes or by people and firms with very good performance records.

After the banks wrecked the system, the US government 'lent' the big banks a 
lot of money and guaranteed 'loans' to huge companies which had made huge 
and obvious errors bordering on fraud, so that the system would not seize up 
entirely.

Often these large firms turned around and gave much of that money as 
'bonuses' to the very people who caused the wreck in the first place.

There is a certainty that much of the FDIC money is going to be lost and 
many of the TARP loans, if paid back, will be paid back with little if any 
interest and in depreciated dollars.

So, Bob is saying, why not lend or guarantee loans for people who in no way 
caused their misfortune and are very likely to pay it all back, and who will 
in the meantime provide a valuable service.

Good question. 

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