Increasing your involvement in your firm's finances can give you the management perspective that helps ensure long-term success. It's perceived that banks don't want to lend. In reality, banks are ready to lend more, but a slow recovery from the recession has made small businesses reluctant to borrow, and a host of regulations has made it more difficult for banks to lend. And while bankers agree that, in some cases, lending practices went awry then, many feel that the new regulations may swing too far back in the other direction. With the nation's recovery in an early stage, other engines of growth are sputtering.
Big corporations continue to retrench.
Hopes for an export boom are fading as the economies of Europe and Japan slow. That leaves small businesses with the burden of leading the country out of its economic slowdown. They employ more people than all Fortune 500 companies combined, and fueled much of the economic growth of the 1980s. But they can't grow without capital, which they have historically relied on banks to provide. Several other financing options exist through lenders which are insulated from the new regulatory pressures affecting banks.