Had a tough time getting a loan from a bank?

If so, you’re not alone. We know that from the abundance of anecdotal evidence and from numbers reported by banks. The dollar amount of total assets, mostly loans, held by Los Angeles County banks and thrifts fell 6 percent from 2007 to 2009. Since asset levels tend to move at a glacial pace, that was a drop about as sudden and hard as Herman Cain’s presidential aspiration.

That asset number has rebounded since; more loans are being made. Still, if you run a business and you’ve tried to get a business loan lately, you know they remain hard to get, particularly for a small business. Even Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said that last month. (At least, I think he said that. It’s hard to tell sometimes.)

What’s galling for loan seekers is that they keep hearing bankers say something like this: “We’ve been lending all along and we’re still lending today. In fact, we’re aggressively seeking good customers right now. Do you know any? We sure do need some.”

How can this be? How can bankers be desperately seeking loan customers at the same time small-business operators feel they’re humble petitioners who are about as welcome in a bank lobby as Alec Baldwin is at the American Airlines ticket counter?

Well, it’s just a thought, but maybe they’re both right. Here’s what I mean:

Bankers do indeed want to make loans. That’s where they make most of their money. That’s what they’re set up to do. Oh, sure, lending got real tight a few years back when the economy was truly imperiled and regulators were scrutinizing every loan to a tenured professor buying a used Volvo with an 80 percent down payment. But even then, bankers were looking for loan customers. They just needed to be exceptionally good customers.

And business operators are right, too. They did indeed have a great deal of trouble getting loans a couple of years ago and still have some trouble today. The reason it’s been difficult: Many businesses aren’t such good loan customers in a recession.

If you operate a business, especially a small business, think of how your revenue swooned in recent years. Maybe your profits dissipated or disappeared. Maybe key employees were let go. Maybe reliable customers became unreliable. No doubt the value dropped on your real estate, receivables, well, nearly everything that could be collateral.

Many operators thought of their companies as still-solid businesses that were going through a rough patch like everyone else. I think many were in denial about how their enterprise – and the economy around them – had sunk. They weren’t looking at their business with the calculating eyes of a banker who’s worried about repayment prospects and who saw lots of question marks.

Sorry to be blunt, but if your loan request was rejected by multiple banks, maybe you weren’t such a good loan risk. Especially in a recession.

And as the recession wore on, more and more companies that had been good credit risks fell into the not-so-good category. That left a smaller pool of good credit risks, which the bankers fought over. That’s why bankers complained they couldn’t find many customers.

Here’s the good news: The worst appears to be over. Banks are not giving away loans like they were five years ago, sure. But loan volume is going up and lending restrictions have eased.

And if you’re looking for a loan or maybe a new bank, perhaps you’ll find a handy guide in this issue beginning on page 24. There you will see profiles of the 50 largest banks in Los Angeles. Our banking reporter, Richard Clough, pulled out each bank’s lending record over the last year in different business-loan categories. If you look for the kind of loan you need, you can zero in on the banks that have been most active lately in that category. Hope it’s a help.

Charles Crumpley is editor of the Business Journal. He can be reached at [email protected].