U.S. ECONOMY

Discrimination by lenders against minority-owned small businesses is bad for the economy, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said. Recent studies “have found discrepancies in the turndown rates” for small-business loans and “not all of these differences are readily explained by income, balance sheet factors or credit histories,” he said in a speech prepared for a Federal Reserve research conference in Arlington, Va. More research needs to be done, he said, “but if, after such examination, the gap persists, it raises disturbing questions.”