Thread by @bopinion

🏀 In the pre-Covid days, the LA Lakers was one of the most profitable sports franchises in the world, earning $147 million in 2018.

Yet the Lakers received $4.6 million from the government as part of the program meant to aid struggling small businesses trib.al/EvPBp0V

🤔 Are the Lakers really a small business? Under the government guidelines, yes.

The Lakers operation has fewer than 500 employees, which qualifies it for a loan trib.al/bWQGKTb

But the Lakers are hardly as vulnerable as your corner grocer, baker, barber or dry cleaner.

That’s why the NBA team told @ESPN it returned the $4.6 million. Other businesses like Shake Shack and Ruth Chris Steakhouse returned their funds as well trib.al/bWQGKTb

The Lakers said it decided to let go of the money after learning the entire $349 billion in federal aid was scooped up in two weeks, thereby leaving out tens of millions of other small businesses the team described as “most in need” trib.al/bWQGKTb

Despite gaping holes in the Paycheck Protection Program’s launch — or perhaps precisely because of them — the government had to approve a second, $380 billion round of funding last week trib.al/bWQGKTb

Thanks to a flow of new reporting, we now have a window into how haphazard and inequitable the PPP program already appears to be.

At least 94 PPP recipients were publicly traded companies with market values greater than $100 million trib.al/bWQGKTb

According to @NBCNews, the PPP also gave large sums of money to Hallador Energy, Crawford United and Flotek Industries.

All three of those companies have ties to the Trump administration. They collectively snared $18.3 million in PPP funds trib.al/pdlmZaD

The @AP “found examples of companies that had foreign owners and that were delisted from U.S. stock exchanges, or threatened with removal, because of their poor stock performance before the coronavirus hit. Other companies have had annual losses for years” trib.al/ZpVDgHV

AutoNation, a national network of automobile dealers with 26,000 employees and a $3.2 billion market valuation, received $77 million in PPP funding, according to the @washingtonpost trib.al/Q6bOVfu

The @WSJ discovered that dozens of publicly traded firms, including Accelerate Diagnostics and DMC Global Inc., received $500 million in PPP funds trib.al/bqMk9l2

The @nytimes and @business reported that a group of publicly traded luxury hotel companies controlled by Trump donor Monty Bennett received more than $50 million in PPP aid trib.al/1T8ehOu

All of this is just for starters – we’ve just entered the program’s second act.

So far, the $729 billion avalanche of funds that have cascaded toward banks and businesses has gone amiss. We’ll undoubtedly learn more in the coming weeks trib.al/bWQGKTb