The Buffett Buffer
This is an almost semi serious proposal suggesting payday lenders could get good publicity.
There are many entities with plenty of spare cash. The US Treasury isn’t one of them. I think that the good publicity gained by offering zero interest loans to unpaid federal employees is worth the cost. They are good credit risks because they will get paid (without interest) eventually.
I’d say some entity with spare liquidity could help the country and win praise. I call my proposal the Buffett buffer. I think the challenge is largely one of automatic underwriting. It would be necessary to extend the offer only to people who are employed by affected departments. I don’t think this is hard — the web pages are still up, so it is possible to search them. The skeleton staff of non furloughed workers could make employment information public at the request of employees (including their un-paid selves).
Actually since the payoff is in popularity, I think this might be the Bloomberg boom not the Buffett Buffer.
Why not ?
From the insurance stance, we absolutely would do something like this, but the market wouldn’t let us make zero profit from it. Shareholders would demand 20% ROI. We already have coverage of that type for commercial accounts call Business Interruption. Personal lines side Aflac has something in that vein.
The big question I have is what percentage of the 800,000 people who are furloughed, how many are actively seeking employment elsewhere?