Coronavirus PPP loan program is near its $349 billion limit

Yahoo Finance's Dan Roberts breaks down the latest with the White House's PPP loan program for small businesses slammed by coronavirus.

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MYLES UDLAND: All right, let's switch gears and talk a little bit about what's happening in the real economy, on the Main Street economy. The Payroll Protection Program, PPP, those loans just about running out. Dan Roberts joins us now for more on that.

And so I guess, Dan, we knew that we would eventually see the end of the current appropriations amount, you know, reached, but is there any surprise on the SBA side that we've gotten there this quickly?

DAN ROBERTS: So, yeah, I think some people would be surprised it's been only 13 days. Then again, on day one we discussed how banks were immediately flooded and overwhelmed with the number of applications. So I think you could have seen this coming, especially with the kind of changing guidelines.

A lot of businesses I've spoken to-- and I've spent the last week talking to small-business owners who've applied for this program. A lot of them thought, oh man, I better get in on day one or day two because I don't want to miss out. The irony being that some of the people I've spoken to who got approved wished they maybe had waited a little bit longer, but it's probably too hard to try to game the system. You know, there's that eight-week rule that once you get the funds, you have to apply them within eight weeks. And some of the business owners who have received the loans are saying well, jeez, eight weeks? I'd rather be able to wait and use it in July or August when I'll actually be able to hire back my workers. Now I'm going to waste it on payroll for people that I'm not using because our business is shut down.

Now all that being said, as I mentioned, 13 days. We are just about to run out here. I believe it was Larry Kudlow earlier in the week predicted that the initial $349 billion pool would run out Thursday, but it looks more like it's probably going to run out tonight, today being Wednesday. The latest update just 45 minutes ago from the SBA was that $301 billion has been approved, and that's about 86% or 87% of that $349 billion.

Now, of course, as I've been careful in the last few days to caveat, that's not the same as the amount that has been sent out. And by all accounts, the actual money that has been sent out the door, deposited in people's accounts, is very, very little, a slim maybe 2% of the amount of loans that have been approved.

Yesterday I did a story talking to four small-business owners who have actually received the money, money in their accounts. But in those cases it was all small community banks. The trend I'm seeing is that the big guys-- Chase, you know, BofA, Wells Fargo. In the end, I'm sure they will approve more money, but they are being very sluggish to send that money out the door.

And confusingly-- just one last note here. Yesterday on the Chase call, Jamie Dimon said that Chase has sent $9.3 billion of PPP money out the door. I don't see how that's possible because I have yet to hear from anyone who has received their money from Chase, and I'm seeing new theories now that maybe that was a little bit confused and he was actually talking about the stimulus money, not the PPP money. I find it hard to believe that Chase has actually deposited $9 billion worth of PPP loan money into people's accounts.

So suffice to say, the two big takeaways right now-- the money is about to run out, and we need to see if they can put more money in this program; and people who have had their loans approved have not yet actually receive the money.

MYLES UDLAND: Yeah, so several waves here coming, I think, on the small business--