And financing is cheap, if your credit's solid. The old Philly banks are gone, but lenders such as Susquehanna Bank, Tristate Capital Bank, Sovereign Bank, TD Bank, and M&T Bank Corp. "are very active" for business borrowers, said Graeme Frazier, president of Private Capital Research here.
For these capitalists, it's not the supply of money that's out of whack. It's demand for what business sells.
Individual business owners don't want to risk expanding, when nobody else is. "Folks are a lot more cautious these days than they were three or four years ago," said Michael E. Jacoby, senior managing director at turnaround consultant Phoenix Management's Philadelphia office.
The job cuts are mostly behind us, but hiring hasn't recovered, Jacoby said: "It's become much less a problem of cost reduction. Now, people are focusing on revenues. How do we grow these organizations? Where are we going to find new customers, new sales channels, new value to add? That's the challenge."
Nobody was praising President Obama's banking or health-care laws. But I didn't hear attendees blame the slump on them, either, or predict that all will be well next time a Republican wins the White House. I did hear calls for a simpler tax code and more liberal immigration laws for skilled foreign workers, so they build our economy, instead of going home to our rivals like India and China.
How do these guys (they're mostly guys) cope with slow times? They are looking forward to waves of business sales and takeovers, as firms that can't figure out how to grow themselves sell to investors who in turn hope to squeeze profits by mashing two operations together, closing a headquarters, cutting costs a little more, and waiting for recovery.
