2 But small businesses were  1  See Frederic S. Mishkin (2008), "Small Business Lending", testimony before the Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, U.S. Senate, April 16. 2  See Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (2008), Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey on Bank Lending Practices, October, and July.
It is very difficult to get any objective reading on this. As I have noted, the statistics on impaired loans show no sign of any such decline. Problems, if there are any, will be revealed in these data only in the future.