As advertised, last week the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship held a hearing to look into the impact of the credit crunch on small businesses. Setting aside the argument about whether, in fact, there is a small business credit crunch, it seems that SBA Administrator Steve Preston is concerned about ‘very small businesses’ [...]

In its latest member survey, released last week, the National Association for the Self-Employed decided to ask how the housing market meltdown is effecting microbusiness owners. More than eight in ten microbusiness owners also own their home and a sizable 59% of them have fixed rate mortgages. That does not mean, however, that nobody is [...]

Last week, the House Small Business Committee finally got around to holding a hearing to examine the critical role credit cards have come to play in small business financing. It turned out to be an unexpected pleasure to sit through, thanks to testimony by Dr. Robert Lahm, associate professor of entrepreneurship from Middle Tennessee State [...]

The rate of growth in small business lending in 2006 was modest, which is only to be expected in what (in hindsight) can be called a sluggish economy. And, when compared with the previous year, there was a bit of a flip in the numbers between small and micro business lending. Those were the principle [...]

Senate Small Business Committee Chairman John Kerry (D-MA) seems to be growing increasingly agitated about the possibility of small businesses getting caught in a credit crunch that may result from the capital markets mess and has promised to ask some pointed questions during this week’s budget hearing. As usual, the proposals coming from Capital Hill [...]

It should come as no great surprise that the economic stimulus package passed by Congress last week did not contain that funding increase for the Microloan program I told you about, that was proposed by the top two lawmakers on the Senate Small Business Committee. However, in the wake of a report from the Federal [...]