The testimony from three enterprises we sampled for this week’s edition, focused on the issue of Latino Entrepreneurship and access to capital, leave a dismal balance for Philadelphia:

The city classified one spot away from being at the bottom of the national ranking among the top 11 U.S. capitals, in terms of support of nurturing and development of small businesses.

With and without support, Latino enterprises continue to prosper in Philadelphia, although those which do, do it confronting frequent humiliating denials on regular credit applications presented to well-known banks in this city for which the Latino last name may still be a red flag to approve a simple loan, despite evidence of cash flow or longevity of the business applying for it.

Wells Fargo, for example, denied a credit application to one of the most prosperous business in the Latino community, and also did Wachovia, before it became the even larger Wells Fargo, recently in the news, not necessarily for the sterling standards in fair lending to Latinos. The CEO, who came up the ranks from Small Business lending, was actually forced to resign due to not so much orthodox business practices with consumers in what is today the third largest bank in the U.S.

Capital is the blood of a business and, in the absence of superabundant cash flow through regular receivables accounts, it becomes the bottleneck that stifles the growth of a creature upon which owner and employees welfare depends on. 

No matter how hard they try, no matter how good the products and services may be, the absence of capital to enable the business with more capacity to produce, can kill the best ideas and subdue the most courageous entrepreneurs.

The damage done to these enterprises finances keep expanding like a cancer into the city’s neighborhoods, in which the absence of prosperous business simply means less employment, less taxes for the government, eventually less money to lend to the public. It’s a vicious cycle.

Which policy, in the hands of enlightened leaders, both in the public and private institutions that lend money to small businesses, can finally reverse the vicious cycle? With steady good will and sustained policies that acknowledge where the source of honest wealth in reality is, small businesses should thrive.

Not in the banker’s vaults where the stash of cash is stored, but in the mind and the determination of the solitary entrepreneur willing to bet his life on his or her business dream and plan.

Cities don’t create renewals only by building tall skyscrapers in downtown, for which the financing is quick and easy from those large banks, but by spreading intelligently that badly needed cash into the robust economic development engine, which new immigrant entrepreneurship has always been for America.