small businesses

While some banks are being encourage to lend more, pressure is also coming from regulators to crack down on riskier customers.

As Congress continues to debate over the payroll tax cut extension, we ask small business owners about how the decision might affect them.

The majority of the funding, $20 million, will be used to provide loans to small businesses in the region, which will be administered by community development financial institutions....

Small businesses saw a sharp jump in hiring in December, according to an ADP report released Wednesday.

The grant will be used to expand Kiva's microlending program in the U.S. and increase its capacity to support small businesses, build awareness and understanding of microfinance, and study the microfinance marketplace....

Finally, nearly two years after they were bailed out by Congress, big banks are beginning to ease lending standards for individuals and small businesses.

But it's not exactly having the reception many believed it would. Just when credit becomes more available, there's little evidence of a surge in demand for it.

On Monday Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke took up the growing issue of lack of lending to small businesses by banks, and the havoc it's causing in the economy.

Lending to small businesses contracted by $40 billion for the first quarter of 2010 as compared to 2008. Only a third to half of small businesses were able to secure a loan or line of credit in 2009.

And Small Business Administration lending all but disappeared in June, thanks to the end of a popular stimulus program.

Want to reward -- or bribe -- your workers for healthy lifestyle choices? Provisions in the new reform law offer aid, and even some cash, to small businesses that run wellness and prevention programs for their employees.

To motivate the well-off to funnel more of their cash into small businesses, should the federal government offer investors new tax breaks?

Main Street businesses shed another 18,000 jobs in February, bring the tally of jobs lost from America's small businesses to nearly 3 million since February 2008, according to a report released Wednesday by payroll processor ADP.