Just had an interesting marketing meeting here in my office. It got me thinking about who and what industries or job sectors are safe bets right now. The economy is different than the last 10 years for sure, but no matter what the R's tell us, I think that unemployment is finally starting to shrink. It stands to reason that banks must be making commercial loans, because they have to make a profit.

Who are the banks betting on right now? I don't mean people with good credit, who have a solid banking history. I am talking more about what job areas do banks feel comfortable with lending to?

A Vapor Bar has opened up on the corner of State and Capitol in Olympia, would a bank look favorably on this kind of thing? I have no idea what it is but there looks to have been some significant outlay of cash to get it started.

A custom cupcake shop? What if they said it was "organic" cupcakes?

If a person comes to a bank with a good prospectus, market study and other investor type documents how much scrutiny is applied to the actual industry or service in comparison to the scrutiny of the person or start-up applying for the loan? In a nutshell do good people with bad ideas get preference over regular people with good ideas?

Lots of questions but whenever we have a marketing meeting I always end up with way more questions than answers.

Interested to hear what the members of this board have to say, knowing that we are spread over a variety of local businesses and industries.