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An emergency relief program hastily rolled out in the early days of the pandemic had such poor fraud protections that it improperly doled out nearly $4.5 billion to self-employed people who said they had additional workers — even those who made wildly implausible claims, like having 1 million employees, the New York Times reported. The $20 billion program, called the Economic Injury Disaster Loan Advance, offered small businesses immediate grants of up to $10,000 in the months after the pandemic shuttered much of the economy. But hundreds of thousands of the grants it made were inflated because there was no system to catch applications with “flawed or illogical information,” Hannibal Ware, the Small Business Administration’s inspector general, wrote in a report released yesterday. The report, which described how the agency could have spotted obviously bogus applications by taking even rudimentary steps to prevent fraud, was the latest black eye for the SBA, a small department that was thrust to the front lines of the government’s pandemic response. The agency also ran the Paycheck Protection Program, which gave out $800 billion in bank-issued loans but often left lenders and borrowers scrambling to comply with confusing and shifting rules. Fraud was a problem there, too: Tens of billions of dollars may have been taken improperly. The loan-advance grants were created by Congress in March 2020 as part of its first coronavirus aid package. Intended to quickly get money to devastated companies, the program offered grants to businesses that applied for a disaster loan — and allowed applicants to keep the money even if their loan request was rejected. In the 14 weeks the program operated before it ran out of money, nearly 5.8 million applicants received grants based on their company’s head count: $1,000 each for up to 10 workers. Sole proprietors and independent contractors who employed only themselves should have collected a maximum grant of $1,000 — but many collected bigger checks.

The first words on the sign — “VACANT PROPERTY” — posted on the front door of a boarded-up rowhouse in Baltimore’s Upton neighborhood may overstate the obvious: The two-story brick home, its front steps sandwiched between tall weeds and a pile of garbage, clearly hasn’t been inhabited for some time. But the QR code sitting in the sign’s bottom right corner is a window to a trove of more expansive information about this building, Bloomberg News reported. Scanning the pattern with a smartphone camera directs the user to a city web page linking to databases on property ownership, building permits, pending court cases and more. While this information is all publicly available, not everyone knows how to navigate these assorted city and state data portals. The QR code signs are being installed by the city on its 17,000-plus properties with vacant building notices. It’s a practical evolution of a project that began as an artistic collaboration: Back in 2013, Baltimore housing activist Carol Ott and a troupe of street artists launched an effort called Wall Hunters, painting murals on vacant buildings that were accompanied by QR codes that led users to information about the building’s owner on Ott’s blog, Baltimore Slumlord Watch. Several new tools are aiming to confront opaque systems that tend to benefit property owners at neighbors’ and tenants’ expense. Some, like Baltimore’s QR code program, boost transparency and help the public hold property owners and landlords accountable. Others are advocate-led projects that aim to shine a spotlight on serial evictors, ward off the long-dreaded eviction cliff of forced displacement, and help tenants weather the huge spike in rents affecting cities nationwide.

U.S. airlines are looking at the upcoming holiday season and the reopening of vital trans-Atlantic routes to recover the momentum lost in the last quarter following a resurgence in COVID-19 cases, Reuters reported. After a strong summer travel season, air-carriers had to temper their outlook last month for the quarter through September as the fast-spreading Delta variant of the coronavirus slowed down new bookings and drove up cancellations. A month on, dipping COVID-19 cases have raised industry hopes that passengers will be more confident to fly again. Financial services firm Raymond James conducted an analysis of the Transportation Security Administration's seven-day average passenger screening data, which showed that while travel demand still lags the peak reached in late July, it has improved from its lows in mid-September. "Cancellations have abated, bookings are recovering," Chief Executive of Hawaiian Holdings Inc. Peter Ingram told Reuters. "As we get to Thanksgiving and Christmas, we've got the opportunity for a strong, solid recovery." Bookings have also recovered at Delta Air Lines, which expects domestic travel demand to surpass 2019 levels next year. United Airlines said yesterday that it would fly its biggest domestic schedule since the start of the pandemic, offering more than 3,500 daily domestic flights in December - representing 91% of its domestic capacity compared to 2019.

Total U.S. bankruptcy filings decreased 26 percent during the first nine months of the year, as the 312,497 filings dropped from the 420,060 filings in 2020, according to data provided by Epiq. The 295,186 total noncommercial filings through the first three quarters of 2021 represented a 25 percent decrease from the noncommercial filing total of 394,624 through the first three quarters of 2020. Commercial bankruptcy filings during the first nine months of the year dipped 32 percent to 17,311 from the 25,436 filings during the same period in 2020. Commercial chapter 11 filings decreased 47 percent during the first nine months of 2021 (Jan. 1-Sept. 30) from the same period a year ago, as the 2,924 filings declined from the 5,531 filings in 2020.

Cineworld Group Chief Executive Mooky Greidinger can be described as the mirror image of Adam Aron, his meme-loving counterpart at rival AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc., <em>WSJPro Bankruptcy</em> reported. While Aron entered the movie theater business late in his career after stints running an NBA team, a ski resort and a cruise line, Greidinger has been in the business since he was a kid, starting as an usher at one of his father’s cinemas when he was still in school. But his company, which owns Regal Cinemas, isn’t far behind AMC in the number of theaters and screens that it operates. The two companies face similar challenges trying to recover from pandemic lockdowns and get moviegoers back into theaters, while working out deals with Hollywood studios for exclusive theatrical windows to show films before they are released to streaming. As with AMC, Cineworld has suffered extraordinary losses and financial setbacks because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Earlier this year, the company warned of “material uncertainty” about its business after posting a $3 billion loss for 2020. 

U.S. private payrolls increased more than expected in September as COVID-19 infections started subsiding, boosting hiring at restaurants and other high-contact businesses, Reuters reported. The ADP National Employment Report released on Wednesday supported expectations that job growth picked up last month, though it has a poor record predicting the private payrolls count in the Labor Department's more comprehensive and closely watched employment report. September's employment report, due on Friday, will garner more attention after the Federal Reserve signaled last month that it would likely begin reducing its monthly bond purchases as soon as November. Fed Chair Jerome Powell believes the economy is one "decent" monthly employment report short of meeting the U.S. central bank's threshold for tapering its bond-buying program. Private payrolls increased by 568,000 jobs last month, the ADP National Employment Report showed. Data for August was revised lower to show 340,000 jobs added instead of the initially reported 374,000. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast that private payrolls would increase by 428,000 jobs.

Running out of time to get its products on store shelves ahead of the holidays, the Basic Fun toy company made an unprecedented decision: It’s leaving one-third of its iconic Tonka Mighty Dump Trucks destined for the U.S. in China, the Associated Press reported. Given surging prices for shipping containers and clogs in the supply network, transportation costs to get the bulky yellow toy to U.S. soil is now 40% of the retail price, which is roughly $26. That’s dramatically up from 7% a year ago. And it doesn’t even include the cost of getting the product from U.S. ports to retailers. “We’ve never left product behind in this way,” says Jay Foreman, CEO of Basic Fun. “We really had no choice.” Toy companies are racing to get their products to retailers as they grapple with a severe supply-network crunch that could mean sparse shelves for the holidays. They’re trying to find containers to ship their goods while searching for alternative ports. Some are flying in some of the toys instead of shipping by boat to ensure delivery before Dec. 25. And in cases like Basic Fun, they are leaving toys behind in China and waiting for costs to come down. Like all manufacturers, toy companies have been facing supply-chain woes since the pandemic started and temporarily closed factories in China in early 2020. Then, U.S. stores temporarily cut back or halted production amid lockdowns. The situation has only worsened since the spring, with companies having a hard time meeting surging demand for all sorts of goods from shoppers re-entering the world.