While you'd expect that to be bad news for entrepreneurs looking to raise cash, William Dunkelberg, a professor at Temple University who conducts a monthly survey of over a half million small businesses, says so far there are few signs of a credit crunch. After a decade of economic growth many businesses have built up a track record they can take to the bank. In Washington, I'm Stephen Henn for Marketplace. For the first time today, a handful of stocks on the New York and American stock exchanges were bought in sold in dollars and cents instead of halves, eighths, sixteenths and other fractions. The sky did not fall.
Decimals do more than make the math easier.
They can trim the profits that Wall Street middlemen get on each transaction. Marketplace's Jessica Smith has this report on how they are coping. It used to be 12 cents, and then it went to 6.25 cents. Now it's a penny. That is a dramatic difference.