Obama Looking At Small Business

Obama turns his attention to small businesses
by SusanG Sat Oct 24, 2009 http://susang.dailykos.com/
This country was built by dreamers. They’re the workers who took a chance on their desire to be their own boss. The part-time inventors who became the fulltime entrepreneurs. The men and women who have helped build the American middle class, keeping alive that most American of ideals – that all things are possible for all people, and we’re limited only by the size of our dreams and our willingness to work for them. We need to do everything we can to ensure that they can keep taking those risks, acting on those dreams, and building the enterprises that fuel our economy and make us who we are.
For the second time this month, President Obama has aimed his weekly address in the direction of small business. For the first October weekly address, he outlined specifically how health care reform would help out entrepreneurs and innovators, and in this morning's address, he discusses how his Recovery Act--and, by the way, his health care reform proposals--will benefit the little guy.
Small businesses have always been the engine of our economy – creating 65 percent of all new jobs over the past decade and a half – and they must be at the forefront of our recovery. That’s why the Recovery Act was designed to help small businesses expand and create jobs. It’s provided $5 billion worth of tax relief, as well as temporarily reducing or eliminating fees on SBA loans and guaranteeing some of these loans up to 90 percent, which has supported nearly $13 billion in new lending to more than 33,000 businesses.
In addition, our health reform plan will allow small businesses to buy insurance for their employees through an insurance exchange, which may offer better coverage at lower costs – and we’ll provide tax credits for those that choose to do so.
The President discusses his move earlier this week to have the federal government increase the maximize size of loans available through the Small Business Administration, and the effort the feds are undertaking to pump money into smaller, community banks. "The goal here," he explains, "is to get credit where it’s needed most – to businesses that support families, sustain communities, and create the jobs that power our economy."
And, he says, already we can see the signs that federal intervention has worked to unfreeze the economy through the loans to the big commercial banks and big business ... now it's the turn of the smaller institutions:
But while credit may be more available for large businesses, too many small business owners are still struggling to get the credit they need. These are the very taxpayers who stood by America’s banks in a crisis – and now it’s time for our banks to stand by creditworthy small businesses, and make the loans they need to open their doors, grow their operations, and create new jobs. It’s time for those banks to fulfill their responsibility to help ensure a wider recovery, a more secure system, and more broadly shared prosperity.
The full address can be found beneath the fold or on the White House website.
You can Watch the video:

GM,Chrysler Managed Poorly

ASHINGTON - Shockingly poor financial management at General Motors and Chrysler weakened their case for a federal bailout, but officials feared letting them
collapse, the former head of a government auto task force said Wednesday.
In a first-person account posted on Fortune magazine's Web site and in a Brookings Institution speech, Steven Rattner said he was alarmed by the "stunningly poor management" at the Detroit companies and said GM had "perhaps the weakest finance operation any of us had ever seen in a major company."
GM's board of directors was "utterly docile in the face of mounting evidence of a looming disaster" and former GM chairman and chief executive Rick Wagoner set a tone of "friendly arrogance" that permeated the company, Rattner wrote.
"Certainly Rick and his team seemed to believe that virtually all of their problems could be laid at the feet of some combination of the financial crisis, oil prices, the yen-dollar exchange rate and the UAW," Rattner wrote.

It would seem that both GM and Chrysler had more than a few inept people working for the companies. Either that, or they were totally stupid and had no reason being in the posititions in which they were in.
This is most inexcusable for GM, which has been around for ages and should have had the no-how to deal with hard times no matter how bad the economy was getting. The government should be held accountable also, since it let the companies apply for auto-bailout funds while knowing how weak these giants were. Both car manufacturers should have been allowed to fail even though that would have put many honest workers out of a job.
Did you know that the United States government now owns some 61% of General Motors and 8% of Chrysler?

Rattner said at the National Press Club that he, along with Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and White House economic adviser Larry Summers, "hated the idea of the U.S. government owning equity in these companies" but they concluded the government needed to protect taxpayers.
"It was frustrating that many commentators were suggesting that the government stay on the sidelines and let the companies fend for themselves," Rattner said. "With financial markets still frozen, both would have unquestionably run out of cash quickly, slid into bankruptcy, closed their doors and liquidated."
Rattner said the loss of the companies could have severely harmed the economy, costing "more than a million jobs in the short run." He said their failure also would have dramatically deepened and prolonged the recession and would have pushed unemployment rates in several states "above 20 percent."http://www2.tbo.com/content/2009/oct/21/auto-task-force-shocked-state-gm-chrysler/news-breaking/#