Am doing some preparation for an appearance on Business Matters in LBC 97.3 at 5pm today. The thing about phone in shows is that you never know quite where the audience (or the presenter!) are going to take you. But as I scan this weeks business pages there seems to be distinctly conflicting signals for SMEs.
Banks are clearly starting to get caught between the Chancellor putting pressure on them to re-start lending to SMEs from the huge pots of public cash that have been thrown at them and the spectre of bad debt on mortgage lending that seems to be coming over the hill. So guess what? The banks are sitting on the cash just in case. So SMEs, don't expect much in the way of ease of access to funds in the near future. We'll see if today's pressure on the Bank of England to keep the cash taps flowing makes in difference.
Meanwhile, unemployment seems set to rise sharply and it's going to hit the under 25s hardest. For an SME like mine that may not be the end of the world as it suggests the main breadwinners will still be OK and hence able to buy things like table tennis tables. Looking from the perspective of my day job however, Camden Town is very reliant on young people. Then again youth culture tends to thrive on youth unemployment, so who knows how that will play out. Either way I wouldn't want to be coming out of Uni with big debts at this point in time unless I was one of the few who already had a good entrepreneurial zeal ready to take advantage of the undoubted opportunities out there if you know how to exploit them. This weeks announcement of a £1bn fund to help young people find work shows how worried the government are.
If previous experience is anything to go by, none of this will come up during the show today and I'll be making up answers on the hoof. Which of course is half the fun!
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