Loans From Washington: A Blessing and a Curse for Small Business

The “American Recovery Capital” loan was created in response to small business’ need for its own bail-out plan. As a part of last year's billion-dollar recovery act, this program seemed like a good plan in helping small business recover, but turned out to be more trouble than it was worth for many.

This article at CNNmoney.com outlines the loan program, and how, for the nearly 5,000 who participated, it may have been worth the struggle. But the bottom line? Overall, it was a flop that had U.S. Sen. Olympia Snow (a primary supporter of the bill) calling for its termination five months later.