Washington was embroiled in a game of fiscal chicken at the end of the year. Unemployment is high at 7.7%. The 2.5 million people who are unemployed but so discouraged that they're not actively looking are unchanged from 2011. November's month's trade deficit ticked up, which is a worrisome sign. 

And behind it all, Ben Bernanke is busy. He has, for the first time, tied the Federal Reserve's low interest rates to a 6.5% unemployment target. And in the face of an insistent economic funk, the Fed's latest round of quantitative easing uses $85 billion of monthly monetary kindling to do what many credit unions would also like to do: put capital to productive use in the real economy.

The U.S. economy is struggling to catch fire after years of recession and slow growth. One of the essential components of economic energy, business lending, is simply hard to come by. A November survey from the National Federation of Independent Business shows that "more [small business] owners expect that it will be harder to arrange financing than easier." The Federal Reserve's October survey of senior bank loan officers shows that while credit is slowly easing, it is still hardest to come by for small firms. Kindling needed.

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