In an attempt to grease the wheels on lending to America’s small businesses, President Barack Obama wants to provide community banks with a few billion dollars. The additional money may be just what’s needed to keep community and regional bank exchange traded funds moving.

Obama may provide community banks with $30 billion to encourage lending to small businesses, report Nicholas Johnston and Alison Vekshin for Bloomberg. Banks with assets between $1 to $10 billion would borrow up to 3% of their risk-weighted assets and banks with less than $1 billion in assets would receive up to 5% of their holdings.

ETFs focused on regional banking shares have tended to outperform the broad sector. Why is this area of the troubled financial system coming out ahead?

Overall, there is speculation that smaller lenders’ credit losses are easing and that they will be less affected by potential financial regulations, John Spence for The Wall Street Journal says. This may explain why regional banking shares are performing well, compared to the rest of the financial sector.

President Barack Obama addressed some of the major issues facing our economy today and expressed his desire to work toward resolving them. Here are a few exchange traded funds that could be opportunities as the nation’s problems remain in the spotlight.

Health Care. The vote to fill the seat of late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy shifted power in the Senate. Scott Brown won the race against Democrat Martha Coakley 52% to 47%, costing Democrats their 60-vote majority. Brown has been an opponent of health care legislation, and many fear it’s a death knell for the effort. The health care bill would bring in more patient business to hospitals if it were to pass legislation. But Obama is not giving up, and appealed to lawmakers to “take another look at the plan we’ve proposed” and not to walk away from reform.