Case Western Reserve's Scott Shane is trying to figure out whether small business owners are finding it easier to get credit now than during the recession.  And, as he shares at Small Business Trends, he's found conflicting data.  On the one hand, there is the trend of more loan officers reporting looser credit standards, as Shane shows here:

And yet, according to a couple of key surveys, small business owners themselves say they have not seen any loosening of standards. Still, Shane finds some cause for optimism amid all the confusion:

Maybe I should look at the bright side. The lack of agreement that small business access to financing got worse in the past year means that the situation is improving. Before the recovery started everyone agreed that small business access to credit had deteriorated.

Read the full post here.