For some small-business owners operating in an era of tightened credit, the answer to "What is the Federal Reserve doing to help small businesses get credit?" might be a frustrated, "not enough."
The Federal Reserve did employ some hands-on emergency measures after the financial collapse of 2008 to help keep credit flowing to small businesses. But its role today in helping small businesses secure loans is arguably informational.
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The Fed acts as mainly a facilitator, making small-business owners aware of available resources and potential providers of credit — big banks, small banks, credit unions, and newer players in the Internet-based world of financing.
The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, for example, maintains a
Small Business and Entrepreneurship Resource Center Web page compiling publications, data, and relevant events.
The Fed also reports annually on the overall lending climate through its
Joint Small Business Credit Survey Report.
The Fed took on this reportorial role in earnest in 2010, when then-Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke put his name and prestige behind efforts to improve the small-business credit environment, and in the process became something of a cheerleader for small business.
"Making credit accessible to sound small businesses is crucial to our economic recovery and so should be front and center among our current policy challenges," Bernanke said in 2010 at a Fed-organized conference, Addressing the Finance Needs of Small Businesses.
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The Federal Reserve continues to connect small-business owners with lenders and public policy makers through summits to address the ongoing challenge of credit for expansions, equipment, and the like.
In May 2014, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York hosted Filling the Gaps: Summit on Small Business Credit Innovations, which examined the state of the market and evaluated some of the new "alternative lenders" offering financial products in the vacuum left by cautious big banks.
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