Here’s the link, a New York Times story about how microlenders are stepping in at a time when banks are scared to lend. Here’s the snippet:
Greg Walker-Wilson, chief executive of Mountain BizWorks, a nonprofit group in Asheville, N.C., that provides assistance and loans to small businesses, said his office had received five referrals from banks in a recent week — five times as many as in a typical week before the economic crisis.
And many entrepreneurs relatively new to the game are learning the hard way how difficult borrowing can be.
Jeff Brown, for example, said that last year, when he bought Ference Cheese, a 40-year-old retail and wholesale company inAsheville, he had no idea how tough it was going to be to obtain a bank loan to expand.
After buying the business in July, he talked to a local bank and left “with the impression that opening a line of credit would not be a problem,” he said. But in September, the bank started saying, “We’ll keep you in mind,” Mr. Brown said.
By December, he had learned about Mountain BizWorks, and he is awaiting approval for a $50,000 credit line. He plans to develop a Web site to sell the 400 types of domestic and imported cheeses he offers, hire five employees and open four more retail locations in the Asheville area.
“You can bail out banks, automakers, insurance companies and everyone else,” he said. “But banks won’t even give me a penny.”