When I was in college there were plenty of brands of beer to choose from. Budweiser was then, as now, the most popular. But, second was Schlitz. Then there was Stroh's, POC (Pilsner of Cleveland), Iron City (Pittsburgh Brewing Company), Duke (Duquesne Brewery), Genesee, and many others. We must have sensed that all of this was coming to an end because when I was in my 20s there was a popular pastime of collecting beer cans. One wanted as obscure a label as possible.

Today there are only a handful of national brewers, not because it is so expensive to brew beer or to transport it but because it is so expensive to advertise and to put out the distribution force that successfully muscles smaller rivals from the pub taps. Now we have but three brands: Budweiser, Miller and Coors. And, all of them are foreign owned. But, even as that was happening, we experienced a revival of local brews through microbreweries. Now there are thousands of microbreweries that slip by the power of the major brands by depending on taste and their own brew pubs rather than advertising and distribution.

I was thinking of that when reading about the conflict shown between bankers and small business owners during a hearing of the U.S. Senate Small Business Committee on small business lending. According to a news article in American Banker, a New Mexico car dealer complained that his bank had cut off his line of credit. Two seats away was the David Rader, executive vice president for small business lending at Wells Fargo Bank. Rader said that Wells Fargo hadnt cut off lines of credit to its customers and was, in fact, expanding its small business lending.

"But my bank is Wells Fargo," said the auto dealer, who also maintained that he had never missed a payment.

The banking industry is becoming like the beer industry. There are a few mega-banks and many small community banks. Major regional banks are disappearing. And, it appears that many of the mega-banks (Citi, Bank of America, etc.) are now or soon will be owned by the federal government. This changes relationships. It can't be surprising that the executive vice president of Wells Fargo doesn't know what is going on in New Mexico. At the same time, no community bank is likely large enough to serve this auto dealer who has a chain of dealerships.

When we think of small business lending, we think of mom and pop shops. But, there is a vast market out there of companies who are substantial by Main Street standards and small by Wall Street standards. It will not be productive to allow them to go the way of Schlitz and Stroh's and POC.