"Going to the mattresses..."

"Bank of the Cascades Tapped Fed Program for 7 Loans." Bulletin, 12/4/10.

I love this line: "For community banks like the Bank of the Cascades, however, borrowing short term...had no connection to the financial crisis."

"...no connection to the financial crisis." Yeah, right.

"Look, officer, so I shot my husband 7 times, but I really wasn't trying to kill him...."

Really, do they expect us to believe this stuff?

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I've been wanting to say this for awhile, but never got around to it.

Some measures of business activity are just not as meaningful as they try to make it. "Visits" is the biggest. Sure, for motels and airlines, visits are all important. But for the rest of us retail, maybe not so much.

One example. I had 145 people in on Black Friday. That's a lot of people for my small store. As many or more people than I had during the boom days.

My sales about the same as last year. Nothing special.

Just saying....

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Speaking of Bank of the Cascades. The 7 loans they took out really point out something that I've been meaning to mention.

I talk about "willpower" being an important element in starting, growing, and succeeding in business. It may sound strange to apply this to something as organizational as a bank, but I really feel like I was detecting a core group of management and investors who were willing to "go to the mattresses" to keep Bank of the Cascades alive.

I guess you gotta give them credit for that.