Credit Squeeze? —Polischuk

It's mid-2010, and we're well along the way of climbing out of the depths of a deep recession. That is not to say that the climb has been entirely successful; it's still too early for that conclusion and there appears to be many dangers lurking (e.g., unemployment, deficit spending, European financial stability, etc.). What can be said is there have been significant actions on many fronts that have been in place for some time now. Minimally, these efforts have shored up the global economy to prevent a financial collapse.
One of the significant efforts made by our Federal Government was the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, which was highlighted in the April 2009 issue of packagePRINTING. In that article, I quoted the following from a press release issued by The White House Office of the Press Secretary: "The Obama Administration firmly believes that economic recovery will be driven in large part by America's small businesses, which have generated about 70 percent of net new jobs annually over the past decade." To back up these words, the Recovery Act allocated $730 million to the Small Business Administration (SBA) to help open up the flow of credit for this important sector.