The economy slump has hit many people hard and according to the media this includes the banks. What I have read and witnessed indicates the banks are doing well; it is the small business owners that have taken the hit.
I have witnessed banks approve loans and then stall to give out the funds. I have read articles about businesses declaring bankruptcy because their credit limit was reduced. I have read that banks deny loans to individuals that are purchasing foreclosed homes – not because of the buyers credit score, but because of some other items such as needing to make improvements on an AS IS house. Yet these are the institutions that were given money by the government to help us out.
There was very little help last year in 2008. There were a total of 43,546 businesses that filed for bankruptcy, the largest in ten years. This coming February the Labor Department’s “benchmark revision” for its employment report is likely to report a loss of 8 million jobs since December of 2007 (Kaiser, E.).
With all this money going into finical institutions why are so many small businesses not receiving the support they need? Every time a small business goes under, that many more jobs are lost.
I hope that one day soon I will start reading about the banks starting to help out businesses, and not the other way around. Only then will we start to have a true recovery in our economy, one with actual jobs instead of this supposed “jobless recovery”. That is not really a recovery at all, just some bump in the road to make us focus on other items instead of what truly matters.
Reference:
Kaiser, E. & Waitz, N. (2009, November 19), Recession shows shortcomings in U.S. economic data, Reuters. Retrieved from http://www.reuters.com on November 23, 2009.