TAPPER: But just to play devil's advocate on that, a small business, let's say -- not somebody who's going to be affected by the regulatory reform, a small business -- you have proposed, you would acknowledge, a bold agenda, and a small business might wonder, "I don't know how the energy bill is going to affect me. I don't know how the health care reform bill is going to affect me. I better hold off on hiring."
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Yes, the small businesses that I talk to -- and I've been talking to a lot of them as I've been traveling around the country over the last several months -- their biggest problem is right now they can't get credit out of their banks, so they're uncertain about that. And they're still uncertain about orders. You know, do they just have enough customers to justify them doing more? It's looking better at this point, but that's not the rationale for people saying, "I'm not hiring." Let me put it this way. Most small businesses, right now -- if they've got enough customers to make a profit and they can get the bank loans required to boost their payroll, boost their inventory and sell to the customers, they will do so, OK?-Eeeks! This is going to sting whenever someone brings up the point (again) that folks in Washington have a fundamental disconnect with the folks on Main St.
-As I posted here over the weekend, credit lines are the least of our problems.
-Isn't forced lending with no guarantee of a return on the investment what got Fannie and Freddie in trouble in the first place?
As an aside and completely unrelated to small businesses, a headline popped up this morning that reminded me of a conversation with my mother last week. We were discussing pensions and gold and savings bonds and Medicare- you know, typical casual mother-daughter talk. I had asked her 'WTH is going to happen to our markets when China gets angry and decides to sell off our bonds'? Guess it's on China's mind, too.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment