Credit Crunch Begins To Ease For Your Bottom Line

The credit crunch that hit small businesses particularly hard during the recession has begun to ease, said NFIB's chief economist in the latest episdode of Your Bottom Line With Bill Dunkelberg. TRANSCRIPT: This is Bill Dunkelberg on Your Bottom Line. We're going to talk about credit today, something we all need to use. As we mature as a company, most of those turn to banks to obtain our regular financing of course when we started the firm we did that with our own money because banks are not venture capitalists so they don't recognize a good idea when you present them with one. Banks are the major source of credit for small businesses. Looking at the past couple of years, it's been a little difficult as we look at NFIB members and their response to us in the monthly surveys we find that only 4% of the owners tell us that financing and interest rate issues are their top business problem. That compares to 20% who say taxes and 20% say regulations and over 20% have been telling us that weak sales the top business problem. So, as an overall problem it hasn't been much of an issue. We did see credit standards become more difficult during the so-called credit crunch, that is more firms told us that last time they got a loan it was harder that just means more paperwork, more collateral, more fiddling around to get that loan. That's been coming down over the last couple of months so it's good to see that those issues are easing for entrepreneurs who out there trying to borrow money in the market. But we have seen is an interesting pick up in our most recent study for demand for credit lines. 4:09

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