GOVERNMENT: RFC Pays a Dividend

Despite all the ruckus over questionable loans and influence-peddling, the Reconstruction Finance Corp. managed to accomplish a few things last year. RFC Administrator Stuart Symington, who took over the agency when it smelled the worst last May, reported that in fiscal 1951 (ending last June 30), RFC paid more than $95 million to its sole stockholder, the U.S. Treasury.

Of the total, $7.6 million came from interest on loans, $8.7 million from scaling down the amount RFC set aside for losses. In addition to its $16.3 million dividend, the agency turned over $79 million in profits from RFC's synthetic-rubber-production monopoly, tin sales and liquidation of wartime assets.

RFC still has 11,000 business loans for $606 million on its books, wrote off $2.2 million as losses during the year. Since it was started in 1934, said the report, RFC has granted 62,154 business loans totaling $4.9 billion. Of the total, $64.3 million has been written off as "unrecoverable."