Small businesses provide roughly half of all jobs in the USA. However, they're having a hard time borrowing money.
Without loans, businesses can't expand and they may even have to cut staff. Unemployment is already uncomfortably high, and some see small businesses as a key to solving the employment problem. Any recovery will be slow, but it will be slower without a healthy environment for small businesses.
There's plenty of debate about why lending is down. Are businesses hesitant to borrow? Some of them are. Others would love to borrow money, and they could put it to good use. However, some banks are unwilling or unable to make loans.
Government programs have had limited success. Using momentum from SBA loans and creative interpretations of TARP have been proposed. For better or worse, lawmakers are unlikely to make meaningful changes any time soon.
In the meantime, small businesses are trying to make do with less.
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