Big banks ‘directly’ lobbied Ivanka Trump for interest rate hike on new government-backed coronavirus SBA loans: report

President Donald Trump has all but publicly threatened to fire Jerome Powell, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, demanding he lower interest rates – a move that would personally save Trump and his business millions of dollars.

When the coronavirus pandemic hit he finally got his wish. Powell moved interest rates to zero.

(Trump, by the way, attacked Powell nearly two dozen times on Twitter over just the past almost 9 months.)

So when the Big Banks wanted to score a big cash grab under the new federal government-backed Small Business Administration (SBA) loans, part of the $2.2 trillion stimulus program in response to the pandemic, they didn't call President Trump. They called Ivanka Trump.

Reporting on "direct calls" from top bank executives, Bloomberg News reveals they "personally appealed to Ivanka Trump this week as they sought additional guidance and higher interest rates."

"The lobbying campaign appeared to be at least partially effective. Ivanka Trump relayed to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and other administration officials requests to increase the interest rates on the forgivable, government-backed loans," Bloomberg reports. "On Thursday, Mnuchin announced that the government would increase interest rates to 1% from 0.5% on the emergency loans."

Perhaps that explains why the administration of the Small Business Administration thanked Ivanka Trump on Thursday:

And why the First Daughter posted this to Instagram thanking the SBA:

View this post on Instagram

Checking in to thank the @sbagov team who have been working round-the-clock to get relief to our Nation’s small businesses! Applications start tomorrow!

A post shared by Ivanka Trump (@ivankatrump) on Apr 2, 2020 at 9:05am PDT

Read the entire report here.