Gloucester Times article by Richard Gaines

As she listened to a range of witnesses dispute claims by the Federal Reserve System and the Small Business Administration that the "credit crunch" wasn't crushing small entrepreneurs, Mayor Carolyn Kirk said her mind drifted out to sea.

While she was waiting her turn to testify Wednesday afternoon before the U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship chaired by Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, Kirk said she was thinking of the recently ended battle to get $14.3 million in federal aid into the hands of hard-pressed fishermen of Massachusetts.

The same credit crunch that was the formal subject of the committee hearing had overwhelmed the entrepreneurial fishermen, who like men and women who work on dry land, had been driven to borrow equity from their homes to keep their businesses — fishing — going.

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