Issues for small businesses

A couple of interesting articles in this morning’s Star Tribune.

Before I mention them, kudos to the headline writer at the StarTrib. “Florida next stop in now-scrambled Republican race”. Odd . . . I thought that the Republican race was well scrambled before “now”.

The first article describes an aging business owner’s decision to use an ESOP as a means of avoiding selling the business. It’s an interesting idea, although the real problem is finding someone to manage the company and that issue isn’t discussed. But I have a warm spot in my heart for ESOPs since there was one that was very good to me.

The second article discusses the issue of loans to small businesses. I was especially intrigued with “The Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis says it's aggressively studying the problem.” That’s nice, but this isn’t a new problem. How about actually doing something? I was curious about whether the decrease in lending was due to a decrease in demand or the financial institutions’ desire to play it safe, and there’s no conclusion here. But the example they give suggests that the finance industry is part of the problem.