That's not to say he likes the idea of a government bailout. His 45-employee company, which makes wire baskets, hooks and shelves, has added workers as it expanded from one shift to three in the past few months. It drives him crazy that big financial firms might get taxpayer aid for making bad decisions - and that he can't escape the rippling consequences from those bad decisions either way.
"We're growing, we're hiring people, we're buying machinery - and they mismanaged their business, and I shouldn't be impacted by it," Greenblatt said. "We're profitable. ... It's just a disconnect."
Maryland Thermoform managing partner Scott Macdonald said the information he is getting from his advisers - that loans backed by the Small Business Administration are available "but most other avenues are disappearing" - is unsettling. He would like to think that money will be flowing freely again by the time he is ready to purchase his upgrades in coming months, but he doesn't know.
"We're just a little pawn in this game," said Macdonald, whose company is having its "best year in years" so far but is expecting a slowdown. "If Washington messes up and credit disappears for everybody ... eventually everything dries up."
Even the Small Business Administration says its lending is down, at least in part because the banks that make SBA loans are being much more cautious despite the government guarantee.
"They're being very, very conservative," said Oliver J. Phillips, assistant district director for business development with the SBA's Baltimore office. "Some of the banks were packaging the SBA loans and selling them on the secondary market, and because the secondary market is in kind of disarray right now, the banks that were doing that are cutting back."
Anirban Basu, chairman and chief executive of Sage Policy Group, a Baltimore economic and policy consulting firm, said Marylanders should plan on unemployment here rising above 5 percent next year for the first time since 1996 even if the bailout passes.
That would mean 17,000 more people out of work at a minimum.
With the economy slowing and loans trickier to get, "the only possible outcome is more small businesses will be constrained financially and many, sadly, will fail," Basu said.
"Significant pain is headed toward Main Street. Their financial lifelines are now jeopardized by the credit crunch."
