The leaders of two major Iowa manufactures say they really haven’t run into a credit crunch despite what’s been happening on the financial markets. Charles Sukup is head of Sukup Manufacturing, one of the world’s leading makers of grain bins, is also chairman of the Iowa Association of Business and Industry.
"What we’re hearing from our members…is basically they haven’t seen too much effect yet from the national economy," Sukup says. "We’ve kind of been an island of stability and like most cases, it takes a little bit of time for things from the coast to reach us here, which is an advantage for us at this point." Joe Crookham, president of Musco Lighting, says the federal bailout of major banks and the insurance giant A-I-G hasn’t had a direct impact on his company.
"They stabilize the financial market around us and that’s important to have a stable market, but a business that’s not out on the edge financially probably has relationships that will work through that," Crookham says. "You may be doing business with a bank that gets itself in trouble and you have to find another one, but in general we’ve not found any real problem with that." Crookham says none of the banks Musco deals with have had problems.