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Why Blinder Is Wrong About The Fed Having More Bullets

Topics: Credit, Creditworthy, Loan, Risk, Small Business

Alan Blinder, a former Fed Vice Chairman says the Fed still has options if more monetary easing is needed. Please consider Fed Is Running Low on Ammo by Alan S. Blinder. Chairman Ben Bernanke has told the world that the Fed is not out of ammunition. It still has easing options, should it need to deploy them. The good news is that he's right. The bad news is that the Fed has already spent its most powerful ammunition; only the weak stuff is left. Mr. Bernanke has mentioned three options in particular: expanding the Fed's balance sheet again, changing the…

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Small Business Casts Hopeful Eye on Lending Bill

Topics: Accounting, Copyright, Credit, Creditworthy, Small Business

Small-business legislation pending in the Senate would aid some profitable firms with tax breaks, but opinions are mixed on the extent to which it would help get credit flowing again. Peter Fiske, chief executive and founder of Pax Water Technologies, based in San Rafael, Calif., said unclogging the credit markets is the single most important thing Congress could do to benefit small businesses. He said the company, which sells clean drinking water technologies to municipalities, has put on hold the hiring of two new employees because of a lack of access to credit. The Senate bill would inject up to…

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Small Biz Lending Starting to Improve

Topics: Credit, Creditworthy, Sales, Small Business

Here's some good news on the small biz front: securing loans is about to get a lot easier. Big banks are easing lending standards for companies with annual sales of less than $50 million - the first real thaw in the credit market since 2006. BNET Finance Blogger Alain Sherter takes a closer look at what this means for small business owners and managers. Does it signal a return to the years of "easy money," or are or are financial institutions making it excessively hard to borrow even for creditworthy firms?

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Banks Start Lending More to Small Biz

Topics: Credit, Creditworthy, Loan, Sales, Small Business

A new survey released by the Fed on Monday shows that banks are easing lending standards for small businesses for the first time in almost four years. Bernanke urged banks to give loans to more creditworthy operations in mid-July. The new survey, which elicited responses from 57 domestic banks and 23 U.S. branches of foreign banks, was conducted July 13-27. Responses indicated that banks had eased standards and terms over April, May and June, particularly when faced by competitive pressures from other banks or from non-bank lenders. The last time the Fed found a projected relaxation of lending standards for…

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Green Shoots at Last: Small Business Lending Finally Starting to Thaw

Topics: Creditworthy, Sales, Small Business

Take heart, small businesses - big banks are beginning to lend to you again. For the first time since 2006, lenders are making it easier for companies with annual sales of less than $50 million to get "construction and industrial" loans, according to the Federal Reserve Board's latest bank lending survey. In particular, around one-fifth of large domestic banks reported having eased lending standards for small firms, which offset a net tightening of standards by a small fraction of other banks. What small business owners and managers really want to know is this: Do banks' more stringent underwriting standards represent…

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Small biz jobs bill: FAIL

Topics: Creditworthy, Loan, Small Business, Advertising Practices, Small Business Administration

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- As mom-and-pop businesses struggle to make ends meet, the latest attempt to help them has gotten mired in Washington politics. The debate began in October, when President Obama started pushing ways to get cheap capital to small businesses. It continued after his State of the Union address, in which he touted the proposal. Now nearly two months after the administration proposed a new multibillion dollar package of loans and tax credits -- with its ties to TARP stripped out -- the effort to help small businesses has hit a wall. The bill currently stuck in the…

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