At a time when the political leadership of the country is claiming to make significant moves to improve the small business lending scene, and when they are telling us that small businesses are the backbone of the country, we are getting mixed signals from the Small Business Administration.

The recent announcement of moneys being made available to cover SBA guarantee fees, and the increase in the amount of a loan, in some cases to 90% that the SBA can guarantee, all sounded good and positive.

However - some middle level bureaucrat at the SBA has decided that the risk of guaranteeing loans for goodwill under the 7(a) program is too great, and that they should not guarantee such loans for any more than $250,000.   This will have the impact of just about wiping out that program for all of the substantial businesses with employees that have benefited from such loans in the past.

Additionally there are a variety of other recently imposed standards that have left the lending community wondering how and what they can get approved for SBA guarantees.

This confusion is making the transfer of business ownership and the recapitalization of businesses even harder in these tough economic times.

We all need to emphasize to our political leadership and representatives that the new leadership of the SBA needs to get their programs back on track as soon as possible and reverse the recent damage done to these very important, even vital, programs to put small business financing back on track!