Word: rfc
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...Washington last week, Senate and House conferees agreed on the death warrant of the biggest business the world has ever known: the Reconstruction Finance Corp. They completed a bill, still to be approved by Congress and the President, which would end RFC's lending powers in 60 days and dissolve the giant Government corporation within a year. In its place a new Small Business Administration would be set up with lending authority of $275 million (v. RFC's $1.4 billion) and power to make individual loans not exceeding $150,000 to small companies unable to raise private credit...
...recent years, RFC has been so heavily criticized for bad loans and influence peddlers that there were few tears, even among bureaucrats, at its prospective death. Furthermore, with the economy booming and money plentiful, there was no further need for it. But in its prime, RFC helped write some of the most important chapters in U.S. economic history. Set up by Herbert Hoover in 1932, RFC handled about $50 billion in funds, by the reckoning of its longtime (1932-45) mentor, Texas Banker Jesse Jones. Started with a capital of $500 million borrowed from the Treasury, it has since paid...
...Some $2.7 billion in RFC money helped finance relief and thousands of public-works projects, including San Francisco's Bay Bridge ($73 million), the power line from Hoover Dam to Los Angeles ($23 million), and New York's Jones Beach State Park...
...RFC set up a host of Government agencies which have since gone their own ways, including: the Federal National Mortgage Association ("Fannie Mae"); Commodity Credit Corp., through which RFC lent $1.5 billion to farmers during the Depression; the Export-Import Bank; the Rural Electrification Administration...
...During World War II, RFC invested and lent more than $9 billion to build 2,000 war plants, including a synthetic rubber industry, the Geneva steel plant in Utah, the Willow Run bomber plant, the Big Inch and Little Inch pipelines. It spent another $2 billion on raw materials to keep them out of Axis hands, spent $2.8 billion stockpiling strategic metals and minerals...