All Articles Tagged "national federation of independent business"
Real-Estate Bust Hurts Lending for Little Guys
(WSJ.com) — Since the mortgage meltdown, business owners can no longer reliably count on homes or commercial properties to secure financing.
Even as some segments of the economy bounce back, the lagging pace of improvement in the real-estate market continues to hamper owners’ efforts at landing credit. “As the big guys are doing better, people ask, why not the smaller firms? Well, this is a huge part of the reason,” says William Dennis, Jr., a senior research fellow at the National Federation of Independent Business in Washington.
Because business owners used real estate to support financing endeavors in a variety of ways, the subprime crisis hit Main Street particularly hard as it rippled through the credit markets. Before the real-estate bubble burst, home and business properties were a reliable source of collateral for many businesses.
Small-Business Confidence in U.S. Falls to Eight-Month Low
(Bloomberg) – Confidence among U.S. small businesses fell in March to the lowest level since July 2009 as executives grew more concerned about earnings and sales, a private survey found.
The National Federation of Independent Business’s optimism index dropped to 86.8 last month from 88 in February, the Washington-based group said today. Seven of the index’s 10 components declined last month and two were unchanged from February.
