Interest Rates and Small Business Borrowing

December 17, 2015 by

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Many believe that the increase in the interest rate will have a minimal effect in consumers wallets, and others believe small business borrowing will have no change despite this.  Borrowing for the small business owner  they believe is not a matter of whether the interest rate is high or not, but whether the small business owner believe borrowing can benefit their business or not.

For more about this and other topics follow the links below.

Everything You Need To Know About How The Rate Hike Will Affect Your Wallet

For the first time since 2006, the Federal Reserve has announced that it will raise interest rates by 25 basis points. This means that it is increasing the target for short term interest rates to a range of 0.25% to 0.50% from a range of 0% to 0.25%.

Within minutes of the Fed’s decision Wednesday, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase and US Bancorp became the first banks to announce that they would increase their prime rate, a rate used for consumer loans like mortgages. Effective December 17, the prime rate at Wells, JPM and US Bancorp will move from 3.25% to 3.5%. Later in the afternoon, Citibank announced a similar move; many other banks are likely to follow suit.

Yet despite this and despite all the hubbub surrounding the Fed’s decision – journalists and Fed watchers have literally been talking about a rate hike for years – the immediate impact to consumers’ wallets will be virtually indiscernible. Fed chair Janet Yellen even said as much in her Wednesday afternoon press conference.

Small businesses like Nick’s Roast Beef may be easy targets for the IRS, says expert

Nick’s Roast Beef, a small family-owned business in Beverly, was federally indicted Monday and charged with reporting false tax statements.

As it turns out, Nick’s may be just one of many small businesses the IRS keeps a close watch on, according to Forbes.

Small businesses that run cash-only operations make easy targets for the federal government, defense attorney Joel Androphy told Forbes. All the while, bigger, more sophisticated businesses get a pass because the work to prove evasion can be more complicated, requiring more time and work, he said.

Many of the cases the IRS works on come from the “Whistleblower” program and involve small businesses with claims under $2 million, which is small in comparison to what some large corporations may be hiding, according to Forbes.

Don’t expect Main Street to accelerate borrowing overnight

What’s more relevant to small business lending appetite is optimism.

As years of low interest rates start to wind down, don’t expect Main Street to accelerate borrowing overnight.

There can often be a disconnect between the Fed and smaller businesses, which are driven by other variables including cash flow, business opportunities and loan availability and terms. If you’re a growing business, you’ve likely already signed onto loans. For the rest of the smaller guys, however, it’s likely borrowing will ramp up gradually to stay ahead of higher lending rates. And if anything can trigger more borrowing for small companies, it’s a more upbeat mood about business prospects.

“Business credit is so different than consumer credit. It’s driven far less by rates and far more by availability in terms of both loans and market opportunities,” said Jeff Stibel, vice chairman of business researcher Dun & Bradstreet. “Rates are almost irrelevant.”

The Federal Reserve, as widely expected, approved a quarter-point increase in its target funds rate on Wednesday. It was the first rate increase in nearly a decade.

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A Way to Limit Common Management Mistakes

December 14, 2015 by

64510516You’ve probably heard this saying, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”  It’s commonly attributed to Albert Einstein, but that’s a mistake – the exact origins of the quote are unknown. However, as mistakes go it’s a “no harm, no foul” one.

Like this one, some mistakes are little ones, and then there are those big enough to close businesses.  The ones big enough to close businesses usually are the result of the owner’s and manager’s repetitive, unproductive behaviors (i.e. insanity).  The kind of mistakes that they repeat over and over, regardless of facts which show the behavior isn’t working.

Maturation in humans and animals is the process of being able to learn from our mistakes, which results in positive behavior changes.  That’s what we call experience – I tried this, it didn’t work, I learned from it and will try something else that’s hopefully better (and repeat). 

There are several common management mistakes which most people make.  However, there’s a simple time tested way to avoid or minimize the damage from them.  A way which has evolved over centuries and has the power of experience behind it – ask for help. 

The majority of small businesses start because the owner knows something about the product or service.  He’s worked in a specific field for someone else and then gone out on his own.  He’s good at what he does and knows his product, but what he’s not good at is the “other stuff” (i.e.  marketing, accounting, legalities and regulations, human resources, taxes). 

Nor should he be.  While those areas are important in running a successful business, no one has the level of expertise or experience to understand them all.  He shouldn’t expect to be good at or knowledgeable about everything it takes to run a profitable company.

Yet, overwhelmingly small business owners expect just that of themselves.  They won’t ask for help, because they see it as a personal failing.  They believe they can and should figure it out for themselves.  However, they get sidetracked by trying to do the things they aren’t good at and lose focus on their strengths.

One of the best ways to limit mistakes in business (and life) is being willing to learn from others.  Learning from other’s mishaps saves us from having to go through the costs and hardships of making them ourselves.  There are more than enough chances in life to mess up, why not take the opportunity to let someone else do it for you when possible.

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So You Want to Buy an Online Business?

December 4, 2015 by

business (2)There’s a cycle in the development of any new technology and how it enters the business community.  Part of the growth process for any new idea is to be a good enough model to establish a business around it, and have that business become valuable enough to resale.

In the small business community we’re beginning to see the maturing of the online business market.  Up until very recently when people talked about owning an online business they were talking about starting one.  But, that’s beginning to change – small online businesses are trickling into the business-for-sale market. 

Owning and running an online business, like any business, has its positives and negatives.  The way to increase the positives and decrease the negatives begins with the buying process, nothing takes the place of solid due diligence.  Here are 2 vital areas to consider.

Technical

An online business is in a volatile and rapidly changing industry.  How much technical knowledge do you have and how much is needed for the business?  Do the ideas of regularly tracking site traffic metrics, developing SEO tactics, rooting out plagiarized content and maintaining your legal/ethical responsibly for security excite or bore you?

If you can’t or don’t want to manage the day to day technical issues you should have answers to these questions – who will, how much will they cost and how hard are they to find?  The problem of attracting and retaining qualified people is an on-going issue that’s not going to be resolved any time soon, if ever.

Financial

Be sure to assess the company’s actual value, risk and outlook.  Traffic totals are routinely unknown, manipulated and lied about.  Traffic is money, so don’t accept guesses or vague numbers.  The financial information should line up with the site’s metrics, all of which should be hard numbers gathered over a realistic time period.

If you aren’t an expert hire someone who is, someone who knows the industry’s past and current benchmarks.  As well as, someone who understands and has the data for the future outlook specific to your product or service.  Over inflated forecasts for the financial potential of online businesses are legendary.

Don’t be swayed by the hype.  The process of buying an online business is the same as buying one in a more established area (i.e., retail or food store, machine shop, insurance agency).  Taking your time and doing the due diligence is still the key. 

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Small Business Saturday

December 1, 2015 by

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This last Saturday (Nov. 28) was the event small businesses look forward to every single year.  Or is it just hype? Many marketers fail to see whether Small Business Saturday does anything to a small business or not.  Yes, there are figures out there that say small businesses do benefit from this event of the year, but cannot tell you where those figures come from. Whether you shop locally and try to do business with the small shop in your city, the question to ask is whether one day a year will make a big difference in the life of the small business owner. For more about this topic follow the links below.

It’s Naive for Small Business to Expect Much From Small Business Saturday

Join us at Entrepreneur magazine’s Growth Conference, Dec. 15 in Long Beach, Calif. for a day of fresh ideas, business mentoring and networking. Register here for exclusive pricing, available only for a limited time.

Can you feel it? The building anticipation for what seems to be the small business event of the year. I’m talking, of course, about next weekend’s Small Business Saturday (Nov. 28). Sandwiched between Black Friday and Cyber Monday, this is the day that all of America is supposed to be honoring small businesses. It’s our moment. We’re hanging signs and putting out the displays. “Support us!” we demand to our communities. “We’re small businesses!”

Really? Are we that naïve? Do you really think that Small Business Saturday means anything to your customers? Do you really believe articles like this one that report that there were “88 million Small Business Saturday shoppers in 2014” and that they “spent $14.3 billion.” Oh c’mon…where does this data come from? And how many of these shoppers would’ve been out shopping during that first unofficial weekend of the holiday season anyway? Do you think this was because of Small Business Saturday? Believe me…it’s not. But don’t tell that to some.

How Congress could give small businesses a bigger incentive to invest in growth

Under current law, small businesses can expense only $25,000 in capital expenditures this year, a level far below the $500,000 Section 179 expensing limit that went into effect in 2003.

Congress is likely to remedy that problem in December, just like it did last year, when it retroactively raised the Section 179 expensing limit for 2014 to $500,000 on Dec. 19. That left small businesses 12 days to buy eligible equipment and put it into service in order to take advantage of this tax break. This short window sharply reduced the impact of this tax incentive for small businesses to invest in growth.

How to Secure Your Small Business With Big Business Protection

Layer Your Security

The challenge: Network attacks are becoming more widespread, intelligent and difficult to detect, leaving SMBs at an even greater risk due to limited resources and budgets to fend off threats. Network entry points are not the only publicly-facing attack surfaces; employee devices also may be compromised by users outside of the corporate security perimeter. The solution: A layered network security approach brings a new level of scrutiny to network traffic moving into a SMB, making network protection more complete and manageable.
Small businesses face exactly the same security threats as large organizations. However, they also must contend with the perennial challenge of limited budgets for IT expenditures. The job of administering the network in a small business often falls on the business owner or on the default in-house techie, both of whom wear many other hats in the organization and usually do not have the time, resources or expertise to work on complex deployments and administration. Often small businesses think that enterprise-grade protection is beyond their means.
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Ohio Job Growth, Outsourcing, and Health Costs

November 18, 2015 by

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Many small business paying for health insurance coverage for their employees have seen an increase in their premiums year after year, and they expect 2016 will not be any different. And although paying for health insurance coverage for their employees is an expense that keeps increasing, the alternative is not something they are considering doing.  To retain or attract top workers for their companies, the incentives they offer are as important as the salaries they promise.

For more about this and other news follow the links below.

Should your small business outsource IT?

Depends on how small a business it is.

To outsource or not to outsource, that is the question many small businesses struggle with.

For certain support tasks, like payroll, outsourcing is universally considered the small business protein shake: without it there’s no way to compete with the big guys. But for other business functions, outsourcing is more like the candy bar: it’s tasty at first, but in the end, there’s little real benefit.

IT was once considered a no-brainer for small business to outsource. After all, good IT is expensive and hard to find. Why further stress a fragile revenue stream with another salary?

But in more recent years, IT evolved from a purely supportive department to an integrated revenue driver. For companies who rely on their IT for innovation, outsourcing IT is not a no-brainer; it’s unthinkable.

So what is right for small business: outsourced IT or an internal department? Let’s examine what they need to consider.

Small business health costs: Up this year and next?

The vast majority of small businesses are paying more for health insurance for their employees under the health care law, and many expect their costs to keep going up next year, according to a survey by the advocacy group National Small Business Association.

Ninety percent of the 810 owners surveyed said their costs are up in 2015 over last year, and 84 percent expect to pay more in 2016.

The number of companies that offer health benefits to their employees fell 5 percent to 65 percent this year from 2014, the survey found. The largest decline came in companies with 10 to 20 staffers; 73 percent are offering benefits versus 86 percent last year.

But nearly half the owners provide health insurance to more than 80 percent of their workers. Almost all the owners — 94 percent — believe offering health insurance is important to recruit or retain top workers.

Local entrepreneurs report growth, job gains

COLUMBUS — The Columbus chapter of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization’s annual EO Global Entrepreneur Indicator shows overall growth and opportunity in central Ohio.

The indicator is intended to reflect top Columbus entrepreneurs’ economic experience during the past six months and their outlook for the coming six months.

Seventy-five percent of those involved in the Columbus survey say employment rose in the past six months; the numbers were 70 percent in Cleveland, 56.8 percent in Cincinnati and 58.3 percent globally.

However, only 60.7 percent of those surveyed locally expect an increase in hiring over the coming six months. That’s in contrast to 80 percent in Cleveland, 67.6 percent in Cincinnati and 62.8 percent globally.

Those surveyed in Columbus reported strong profit and revenue numbers both in the past six months and in their outlook for the coming months, besting the percentages of the other Ohio cities’ entrepreneurs in most cases.

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4 Ways to Increase the Bottom Line

November 16, 2015 by

donk1-300x266The majority of small businesses fail because they aren’t able to generate enough operating capital, they simply run out of money.  But, there are ways to prevent this.  The lack or loss of money is overwhelmingly caused by internal problems.  Contrary to most owners’ beliefs, external forces are responsible for just a fraction of small business failures.

Companies run out of money because the owners won’t or don’t know how to address their structural and operational problems.  Commonly, the actual causes of the typical business’s collapse can be traced to 4 problem areas.  Therefore, if addressed in a timely manner, profit and profit margins can be increased when the problems are identified and fixed.

Key to an efficient operation is putting the right person in the right job.  It’s vital to accurately assess employees’ skills, everyone has strengths and weaknesses.  This is especially true in small businesses where family and friends are often in jobs they aren’t suited for.  Putting people in positions they’re not trained to do or just aren’t capable of doing affects the bottom line. 

Lack of accountability – for owners (who usually don’t hold themselves accountable for their actions), managers and workers – is an enormous problem in workplaces.  This area all by itself can financially affect a business to the point of closing.  Employees, owners and managers must be accountable for their responsibilities and behaviors. 

Another area that directly affects profitability is lack of or poor internal and external communication.  Billions of dollars have been lost simply because somebody didn’t pass on important information, talk over a problem, speak up with a concern or listen enough.  Prioritizing effective communication, at all levels, is a smart fix.

The final area, improve production efficiency, is a no-brainer.  Some of the benefits include: it’s cheaper to produce the product, requires less rework, increased customer satisfaction, is easier to sell, generates referrals and decreased waste. All of which contributes to increased earnings.

These are 4 main ways a company can increase its bottom line.  If a small business owner is willing to learn some new skills, and consistently apply them, the monetary and non-monetary rewards (i.e. time off, happier employees, secure future, increased quality of life) are well worth it. 

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Motivating Your Workforce

November 11, 2015 by

62227730When you are a small business owner, you concentrate in making sure the success of the company is possible by working hard and having employees that can help you achieve your goals.  Your goal is to optimize employees work to reach the success you envisioned.  Dedicated employees that can help you achieve your goals are an important part of having a business, and many employers fail to engage or value key employees that are an integral part to the success of their business.

For more small business news, follow the links below.

How Business Owners Can Stay Motivated Every Day

One of the biggest challenge that business owners face is motivation. Yes, they are motivated enough to start their business but there is no one really on top of them telling them what to do, how to do it, why to do it. They need to figure it out on their own. Entrepreneurs need to motivate themselves each day to get out of bed and create the perfect business.

That takes emotional fuel and it sometimes runs out. Wouldn’t it be great to figure out a strategy to load up on the emotional fuel needed to stay motivated? Imagine you can drink some kool aid that was legal and you can feel motivated with no low after. Sugar can get you hyper but it will also get you down right after it runs out. Real motivation comes from within. Here are a few strategies that have worked for me.

Create Clarity – The most important thing that you can do to feel great about yourself and your business is to have a clear strategy, purpose and vision. You need to be clear on why you are doing what you are doing. Once you know exactly how you will be spending your time and why you will be doing each thing that you are doing you will have two decisions to make.

Working hard to feel better: The importance of corporate wellness

Your shoulders ache, your head pounds and crashing on the sofa after a long day in the office is the only thing for which you can muster any enthusiasm.

If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. Work-related stress — compounded by poor eating habits and lack of exercise — affects most of us at some stage, leading to low energy levels and, in extreme cases, cardiovascular disease and certain cancers.

While many strive to lead a healthy life, working for more than 40 hours a week inevitably takes its toll, and with the results of a recent IPSOS survey showing that 42 per cent of UAE employees find the workplace stressful, is there more employers can do to improve employee wellness?

“Absolutely,” says Andrew Picken, managing partner at Bespoke Wellness in Dubai, which offers corporate wellness programmes throughout the country.

Going Millennial: The Perks of Hiring Generation Y

Millennials: The Benefits, the Challenges and Why You Should Hire Them.

America’s population statistics are changing, and so is the workforce. Millennials now officially outnumber Baby Boomers 83.1 million to 75.4 million, according to themost recent US Census.

This means the workplace will soon undergo a transformative change—if it hasn’t already.

As more Baby Boomers reach retirement age, more millennials join the workforce. With this  drastic change in maturity comes a dramatic change in style—and we’re not just talking fashion!

Millennials have different takes on life, different motivations and vastly different expectations of the world compared to the generations before them. Businesses that want to remain successful would be wise to keep up with the times and find new ways to appeal to these burgeoning masses.

 

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The Pitfalls Of Mingling Personal and Business Banking

November 5, 2015 by

donk1-300x266If you are thinking about starting your own business or a partnership with a friend or family member, it would be wise to think about all the financial steps needed to protect your personal assets from those of the business.  It is not about trust-at least not at the beginning-it is about protecting your personal assets from whatever happens to the business now or in the future.  Legally, you should set up a LLC or a corporation for your business.  According to the courts, it is a separate identity from you as an individual, and it provides you protection that you wouldn’t have otherwise if you ever get sued.  Keeping separate personal and business checking accounts is financially responsible and  protects your personal assets.

For more about this topic, follow the links below.

Why It’s a Bad Idea to Mingle Small-Business and Personal Banking

Entrepreneurs starting a business face many decisions about how to best set up and operationalize their company, including whether to register a business; where to set up space; and how to manage finances. For some, especially those operating as sole proprietors, it may seem easiest to use a checking account that’s already set up to manage finances, usually a personal checking account. In fact, according to a 2015 TD Bank survey of small business owners, 56 percent use a checking account for both business and personal finances, and 53 percent use a credit card similarly. Although comingling finances is a common practice, doing so could have consequences for a small business owner.

Using the same account understandably seems easy. It can save the time needed to find the correct paperwork and identification and a trip to the bank to open an account. Small business owners, especially those starting out, watch their spending and typically want to invest their hard-earned money into the business. That is why some opt to use a personal checking account for business purposes. Personal checking accounts typically have lower minimum balance requirements to avoid fees, but working with your bank usually can offer benefits such as relationship discounts or the ability to link accounts and combine funds to meet minimum balance requirements.

Quarter of Small Business Owners Still Using Personal Bank Accounts for Work-Related Finances Despite Financial Risks

Concerns about fees and unfamiliar products preventing some small business owners from separating their personal and business finances

Clearly Better Business Checking, a new business checking account from Citizens Bank, has no monthly maintenance fee, no minimum balance requirement and offers up to 200 free check transactions per statement.

PROVIDENCE, R.I.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–When it comes to managing their finances, a quarter of small business owners are still keeping company money in the same account as their personal finances, according to a new survey released today from Citizens Bank. Despite the potential risks to their personal tax status and their future access to credit for their business, 26 percent of small business owners say they don’t have a separate account for their company.

​Commingled personal and business funds can have harmful implications for both personal and company finances, warns Quincy Miller, President of Business Banking at Citizens Bank.

“Using a personal account for business finances is an easy mistake to make when starting out but it can quickly become a liability. For instance, paying personal expenses using business money or vice versa makes it far more difficult to get your accounting right at tax time,” Miller said. “You also want to have a separate account for business so you can build a financial history that you can later use to apply for credit and other products or services you may need to run your business. Finally, not having a separate account can make it too easy for companies to spend personal funds that may be needed for personal mortgage payments and other important household expenses.”

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Entrepreneurial Stubbornness – the Good, the Bad, the Ugly

November 4, 2015 by

59948705Persistence, not listening to the nay-sayers, determination, following your dream: All things which contribute to starting and building a thriving business. All things which are fueled by good old-fashioned stubbornness.  I have yet to meet a successful small business owner who doesn’t have a very large streak of it.  Unfortunately, that’s not always a positive.

The Good

Stubbornness is a positive quality when it’s driving you to create, build and sustain a business.  The desire to “do things my way”  is a powerful motivator.  It’s what keeps you on track to work the long hours and make the hard decisions.  It has built multi-national Fortune 100 companies, as well as the local machine shop.

The Bad

As the saying goes, “There are 2 sides to every coin.”  There’s a bad side to entrepreneurial stubbornness.  It’s human nature to become attached to our own viewpoint – not only do we get stuck in ruts, we furnish them for additional comfort.  This makes it difficult to see other’s (accountants, consultants, employees, managers) points of view and listen to their ideas. 

Ideas which are good for you and your company.  When a company is growing there’s a juncture when the owner should shift from “a one-man show” style of management to a team approach.  Many don’t make that change, they stubbornly hang on to old ideas and ways of doing things, which often leads to the ugly.

The Ugly

There comes a time when an owners’ refusal to modify his inflexibility crosses the line from poor management skills to self destructive behavior-“the old way is good enough, no  one is going to tell me what to do”.  Resulting in — due to the owner’s unwillingness to recognize and adapt to changing ideas, technologies, employee’s needs and market requirements — a bankrupt company. 

Good entrepreneurial stubbornness often turns bad and ugly over time.  Owners fail to understand that we all need to evolve if we are to thrive in an ever changing world, and we have to be willing to listen to others to do so.  As Benjamin Franklin said, “We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid.”

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Is SEO For The Small Business Owner?

October 29, 2015 by

Customer Relationship Management business chart on a digital tabFor some businesses SEO sometimes does not make sense.  It is no wonder then that many of the small businesses in the United States are not engage in trying or using SEO for their business. If you are a small business owner you may not have the budget or the incentive to undertake SEO as well. And although many businesses struggle to measure the ROI when hiring a company to do they search engine optimization, it is important to be aware of the benefits SEO brings to businesses when they do it well.

7 Credit Card Perks for Small Business Owners

You won’t get these sign-up bonuses and introductory APRs with consumer cards.

Owners of both new and established small businesses can benefit from a broad range of valuable perks offered with credit cards. Business credit cards not only provide a means for building and establishing business credit, but they can assist in record-keeping, preserving cash flow and separating business and personal finances. Much like consumer credit cards, the right business card can offer a plethora of rewards that you can redeem for flights, hotel stays and cash back on purchases.

Here are seven significant credit card perks for small business owners.

1. Valuable sign-up bonuses. Many credit cards offer a range of one-time promotions designed to attract new cardholders and business owners. These promotions might include sign-up bonuses allowing you to earn hundreds of dollars if you meet a specific spending requirement within a few months of opening the account. Sign-up bonuses may also award enough miles and points that you start out with free airline flights or hotel stays, simply for using your credit card.

Why Aren’t More Small Businesses Using SEO?

For more than a decade, thousands of businesses have enjoyed the benefits of high rankings in Google searches (and searches on competing engines) thanks to their SEO efforts. Larger corporations pour hundreds of thousands of dollars and allocate entire departments to gaining more online visibility, but even small- to mid-sized businesses can use a fraction of that budget to get more traffic and sales.

However, according to a recent survey by the Small Business Authority (SBA), less than 50 percent of small business owners in the United States think of inbound traffic from search engines as an “important” source of future business. Another 14 percent declared themselves unsure.

It’s also worth noting that only 17 percent of surveyed small business owners are actively investing in SEO. However, a startling 39 percent of business owners aren’t investing in any marketing strategies whatsoever, indicating that SEO alone may not be the problem.

How will the candidates help small business?

​All politicians express support for small business. These enterprises are the engines of our economy and represent the entrepreneurial grit that has made this country great. Unfortunately, these rhetorical commitments to Main Street have not always been accompanied by meaningful actions. As a result many small businesses are finding it difficult to launch or grow, while others are failing altogether.

Since the misdeeds that led to the financial crisis of 2008, the federal government has adopted a myriad of regulations and requirements designed to reduce risk-taking by Wall Street. The quest for safer banks and greater financial stability is a good thing. However, we must be careful of what we wish for. The most stable financial system is one with no lending at all and many small businesses today are struggling to find credit.

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