This new recession is a really deep one, resulting in unprecedented numbers of long-term unemployed putting an unprecedented strain on that system of social safety nets I was talking about last week.

“We have a work-based safety net without any work,” said Timothy M. Smeeding, director of the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in the article.

Nobody knows how long it’ll be before the jobs return but it’s pretty clear that what we’re doing right now — lurching along with these costly, last-minute extensions of unemployment insurance — is unsustainable.

Last week, the SBA Office of Advocacy released the latest in its series of Quarterly Indicators briefs, this time reporting on the fourth quarter of 2009. So, now, I get to throw a bunch of numbers at you, the good news being that there will not be a quiz when I’m done. The Commerce Department [...]

After all the drama surrounding the down-to-the-wire Senate health care reform bill, which was finally passed on Christmas Eve, 2009, it’s a bit anticlimactic to have to report that President Obama is still having to urge Senate Democrats to ‘finish the job.’ There remain enough differences between the House and Senate versions of the bill [...]

Small entities — including small businesses, small and local governments and small non- profits — saved $7 billion in first-year costs and $745 million in annual recurring expenses, thanks to the SBA’s Office of Advocacy in its role as enforcer of the Regulatory Flexibility Act (Reg Flex). That’s the big take-away in the Obama Administration’s [...]

The Obama Administration seems to be playing its own rather peculiar game with the nation’s small businesses, one that might best be described as I give with one hand and take away with the other. So, while Administration officials have been singing the praises of small businesses and describing the Presidents pro-small business proposals, there [...]

When the financial markets collapsed and small business lending froze, one set of heroes of the day was the nation’s microlenders. In response, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act included enough money to support $50 million in microloans, an unprecedented infusion of funding for the federal government. Unfortunately, microfinance organizations recently seem to be facing [...]

Judging from this week’s news, you have to ask yourself if our nation’s leaders will, without possessing the vestige of a clue, end up destroying what they have not the wit to appreciate.

I’m talking about those proposed rules targeting firms and individuals (but mostly firms) that hire independent contractors.

Now, although this proposal is said to be a part of the President’s budget (and it is), it was actually proposed jointly by the Departments of Labor and the Treasury, and their respective Secretaries, Hilda Solis and Tim Geithner. They illustrate that mid-20th century political philosophies also are a poor fit for the way microbusinesses do business.

As amazing as it may seem in a Washington that often seems collectively afflicted with ADHD, the Obama Administration spent the entire week last week talking about small businesses. And it’s not even Small Business Week! Evidently, when the President said his renewed focus on job creation would start with small business, he meant it. [...]

Living a reasonably cushy life in these United States (by international standards), we Americans are inclined to take certain things for granted. For example, one thing we take so utterly for granted that most have never even thought about the concept is the infrastructure of the U.S. economy. The economic infrastructure of the U.S. consists [...]

President Obama may have proposed a three-year freeze on discretionary spending but among those items he considers worthy of increased investment is the U.S. Small Business Administration. The President’s budget proposal for fiscal 2011 includes an increase of $170 million for the SBA, which would bring the agency’s budget up to $994 million. Those on [...]