Amazon.com description: Product Description: For a nation supposedly committed to the capitalist system of free market economics, widespread ignorance among Americans about how business actually operates is both surprising and discouraging. In no area of commercial activity is this lack of knowledge more evident than business finance - the process by which a company obtains sufficient money to assure the successful creation of products, services, profits and jobs.

While much of the blame for this general economic illiteracy can be placed on decades of deficient education concerning business fundamentals, that does not explain the narrow ideas held by many of those professionally active in the world of finance - bankers, loan officers, receivable lenders, equipment and real estate financiers. Many of these financing "experts" concern themselves principally with their own areas of interest, ignoring or even denigrating alternative money solutions. This constricted approach may stem in part from the profit motive, since lenders naturally want to make money by promoting their own methods. But for the entrepreneur in need of cash, financial tunnel vision can spell disaster.

Unlike the established, historic use of mortgages to buy homes or commercial real estate - probably the financing method most familiar to the general public - other intricacies of business finance remain mysterious rituals conducted in a vague high stakes world more important to others. Thus the casual reader of daily newspapers skips the business section in favor of the sports pages.

That sort of detached popular attitude changes quickly when a person goes into business and has a sudden confrontation with the practical need for start-up and operating capital.

To have any chance of success, the novice must quickly master a host of financing variables including the customary commercial practices of the industry, distinctive methods of borrowing and payment, credit, collateral, management and internal fiscal policies - and even an acquired ability to calculate the interest rate impact of the latest decisions imposed by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in far-off Washington, D.C..

Contents:

The Company You Keep Independent Contractors The Corporation The Dilemma of Business Financing All the Way to the Bank Venture Capital Real Estate Financing Go Public With Your Business Leasing For Dollars Government Financing Factoring - Assured Money for Business Success Going Global and Using Tax Havens Investing the Profits of Your Venture Go Do It