Small business borrowing has been on an increase, something I wrote about recently. Fact is, however, the real heroes of small business lending over the past three tough years have been credit unions, which upped their lending, while bigger banks mostly pulled the plug on it.

Now there's about to be a bill in the Senate increasing the amount credit unions are allowed to lend to small businesses.

A number of companies this week have disclosed in regulatory filings billions of dollars of potential losses from legal proceedings. 

Goldman Sachs Group, for example, said it could suffer "reasonably possible" losses of $3.4 billion from legal claims against the company.

Broader health insurance coverage did not initially lead to significant overuse of the system or increases in hospital costs in Massachusetts.

That's according to research from Wharton School of Business and Yale University professors, findings that, of course, have significance for the Obama administration's healthcare reform. The research was written up in a recent issue of Knowledge@Wharton.

Weatherford International shook investors and Wall Street when it reported after the market's Tuesday close that it would delay the filing of its 2010 annual report after discovering a material weakness in its internal control over financial reporting for income taxes.

The energy equipment and services provider said errors for the periods from 2007 to 2010 totaled about $500 million.

This just in: 401(k) plan providers might not be all that impartial about the investment choices they recommend. In fact, these plans are teeming with conflicts of interest.

That's according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office. Called Improved Regulation Could Better Protect Participants from Conflicts of Interest, it looks at what conflicts exist and what the Labor and Treasury Departments should do about it.

Federal regulators have charged the former treasurer of a private mortgage lending company for her role in a more than $1.9 billion fraud scheme and an attempt to scam the Treasury's Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).

Desiree Brown, the former treasurer of Taylor, Bean & Whitaker (TBW), pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit bank, wire and securities fraud, which contributed to the failures of Colonial Bank and TBW, according to US Attorney Neil H. MacBride for the Eastern District of Virginia.

It seemingly happens every Friday evening.

Federal regulators announce that some small bank cannot continue on its own and a rival is brought in to take over the assets and continue as if nothing had happened.

The former chief financial officer of Freddie Mac will probably face civil charges for his role in the collapse of the mortgage giant.

Anthony Piszel abruptly resigned as CFO of CoreLogic, after receiving a Wells notice from the Securities and Exchange Commission staff in connection with certain disclosure matters during Piszel's tenure at Freddie Mac from November 2006 to September 2008.

It looks like most companies are not ready for the new lease accounting standards expected to be finalized as early as mid-year.

According to a recent Deloitte survey, just 7 percent of executives believe their companies are extremely or very prepared to comply with the new lease accounting standards proposed by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB).

The Chapter 11 proceedings of bond insurer FGIC has raised an age-old specter of US bankruptcy events—namely the high legal fees inevitably charged by lawyers involved in such cases and who is responsible for monitoring those fees.

The insurer listed $11.5 million in assets and $391.5 million in debt in its Chapter 11 filings last fall. Since then, the company has been moving forward through the Chapter 11 process.