The Treasury Dept. held a forum on Thursday to address how the economy has affected small business. Specifically, the forum addressed how to help small businesses weather the bad economy. ABC News reports that an Obama administration focused on how to increase small business access to financing.

In fact, the press release about the forum from the Treasury Dept. details what Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner wanted to convey, stating: “Small businesses, in particular, are still facing a very challenging credit environment.” This is very true with small business lenders like CIT Group and Advanta  filing for bankruptcy in recent news. Geithner wanted to give small business owners some hope about how to get financing.

In fact, President Obama himself is quoted by the American Small Business League as saying: “It is time to end the diversion of federal small business contracts to corporate giants.”

Geithner did not specifically address this issue in his press release: “First, we need to provide direct help to small businesses…And we’ve done that by implementing higher guarantees and lower fees for Small Business Administration loans, greatly increasing SBA lending, which Karen will talk more about in a moment.” While Geithner does address the issue of SBA lending, he did not directly address the concern brought up by the American Small Business League of corporate diversion of grants and funds earmarked for small businesses going to big business.  

According the ABC News, this forum was a chance for President Obama to do some outreach on job creation prior to the White House’s Forum on job growth and economic improvements on December 3. Hopefully that outreach will hone in on what is really important to small business owners.

Related Resources:

  • Parsing Geithner’s speech to small business (Reuters’ Entrepreneurial Blog)
  • Business Banking and Securities Links  (Findlaw)
  • Financing Basics (Findlaw)
  • Ten Things to Think About: Financing Resources (Findlaw)

You Don’t Have To Solve This on Your Own – Get a Lawyer’s Help

Civil Rights

Block on Trump’s Asylum Ban Upheld by Supreme Court

Criminal

Judges Can Release Secret Grand Jury Records

Politicians Can’t Block Voters on Facebook, Court Rules