Small Business Lending on the Rise

Borrowing by U.S. small businesses is at its highest since July of 2008, two months before the collapse of Lehman Brothers, says the Thomson Reuters/PayNet Small Business Lending Index, which measures the volume of small business financing. (PayNet provides risk management tools to the commercial lending industry, and the loans it tracks typically are used to buy or update plants and equipment.)

The index was up 26 percent in May compared to the year before.

"If small businesses are taking these kinds of chances, taking risks, making long terms investments, they are seeing some long-term opportunities on the horizon," PayNet founder Bill Phelan told Reuters. "That's got to be a big positive sign for the economy."

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Stimulus: DOE Completes Cleanup at New York, California Sites

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Last month, the U.S. Department of Energy completed the cleanup of Cold War legacy waste at the Nuclear Radiation Development, LLC (NRD) site near Grand Island, New York, and at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California. The two locations became the 18th and 19th sites to be completely cleaned of legacy waste. This milestone was achieved as part of a $172 million investment from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to expedite legacy waste cleanup activities across the DOE complex.

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Stimulus boosted employment by as many as 3.6M jobs

A White House report released Friday said the 2009 stimulus bill raised GDP by as much as 3.2 percent in the first quarter of 2011. The report from the White House Council of Economic Advisers said the stimulus added 2.3 to 3.2 percent to gross domestic product in the first quarter relative to what it otherwise would have been.

The stimulus package also increased employment relative to what it otherwise would have been by between 2.4 and 3.6 million jobs, the report said.

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Stimulus: Rentricity Powers Cities Using Pressure in Water Mains

Most of the drinking water in Keene, N.H., flows from two reservoirs at an elevation several hundred feet above the city’s water treatment plant. It arrives there at a high pressure that needs to be reduced nearly tenfold for treatment. In February, Keene began using that excess water pressure to spin two turbines plugged into the pipe by a New York City startup called Rentricity, using small generators to make electricity from water pressure that was previously dissipated by a mechanical valve. “What we’re really trying to do is recover energy that’s just not being tapped into and use it to make [utilities] more efficient,” says Rentricity founder Frank Zammataro.

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PowerSaver Loans Help homeowners pay for energy improvements to their homes

WASHINGTON – Eighteen national, regional and local lenders will participate in a new two-year pilot program that will offer qualified borrowers living in certain parts of the country low-cost loans to make energy-saving improvements to their homes. Backed by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), these new PowerSaver loans will offer homeowners up to $25,000 to make energy-efficient improvements of their choice, including the installation of insulation, duct sealing, replacement doors and windows, HVAC systems, water heaters, solar panels, and geothermal systems.

U.S. Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Shaun Donovan and U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced the participating lenders (see attached list) during a tour of a family-run company that offers home energy audits and upgrades in Long Island, New York.

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