I was at the aquarium shop today buying some more plants for my fish to destroy. I love the place -- they are friendly, enthusiastic, and genuinely like fish. I once witnessed the proprietor refuse to sell a goldfish to a girl once she let on she doesn't have a tank and was just going to put it in a bowl. He explained it's not good for the fish, and the fish would just die a very early death. She didn't care. But he did, and took the fish out of her hands and gave her her money back.
Anyway, today we were talking credit, banking, and small businesses. Like many small businesses, he uses an overdraft facility to deal with (very) short-term funding issues -- i.e. managing asynchronous cash flows. Most of the year he runs with a £3000 overdraft, but at year-end he extends this to £8000 to stock up during a busy part of the season, reducing it later. This year his bank, one of the ones bailed out by the UK government, would not increase his overdraft. He's never missed a payment and had been doing this with them for eighteen years. He was in very good humor about the whole thing but clearly his bank's letting him down.
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