Last week the House Committee on Small Business convened a hearing to re- examine the challenges facing small businesses looking for debt capital and banks looking for credit-worthy small business borrowers. The questions of the day were only what was expected: what is the status of the small business financing market and what can Congress [...]

Sometimes, Congress winds up doing the right thing for the wrong reasons and that is never as true as it is when lawmakers don’t know what is going on out here in the real world. Last month, Congresswoman Nita Lowey (D-NY) introduced the Small Business Credit Card Act (H.R. 1137). This relatively short bill would [...]

Small business lending began stabilizing during the 2009-2010 period (although it didn’t seem like it to some small business owners and advocates), which is a euphemistic way of saying the rates of decline slowed over the period. That’s the big take-away from the latest annual release of the aptly named Small Business Lending in the [...]

Last month, the SBA Office of Advocacy released a new research report entitled Bank Credit, Trade Credit or No Credit: Evidence from the Surveys of Small Business Finances, written by Rebel A. Cole with funding from Advocacy. Cole undertakes this research because there is almost nothing in the literature that examines small employer businesses that [...]

It seems pretty clear that the Obama Administration wants businesses to start hiring again and that they want that to happen really badly. The President has been doing a certain amount of campaigning to let citizens know what he’s been doing to deal with an unemployment rates that is stubbornly hovering at around 10%. It’s [...]

Here’s an almost unheard-of concept: if a government program isn’t working, how about turning it off and returning the unused portion of its budget to the Department of the Treasury? It’s the kind of thing that might fall under the category of “careful stewardship of taxpayer dollars” and it almost never happens. But that is [...]

It seemed as if everyone in Small Business-ville, USA, was abuzz with excitement earlier this month when the White House convened a Small Business Financing Summit hosted by Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and SBA Administrator Karen Mills. Only about 100 people were invited to participate in the summit but I’m happy to report that, among [...]

Congress returns from its brief Veterans Day break this week and will leave town again next week for Thanksgiving. One of the things expected to happen during this particular flying visit to Capitol Hill between District Work Periods is a vote in the House on a fistful of small business related bills. Three of them [...]

According to a study released earlier this month from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, credit card debt appears to increase the likelihood of new business failure within its first three years of operation. The study, unexcitingly entitled The Use of Credit Card Debt by New Firms, uses data from the 2004 Panel Study of Entrepreneurial [...]

Small firms with available internal funds are more likely to demonstrate either sales growth or employment growth, or both. That is the unremarkable finding from a recently released study from the SBA Office of Advocacy. “How Strong Is The Link Between Internal Finance and Small Firm Growth? Evidence from the Survey of Small Business Finances” [...]