When they start talking about what they are going to do to help small businesses get through this recession, the only thing that seems to occur to them is to think of sixty-seven different ways that small businesses can take out a loan.

In fact, from the microbusiness point of view, loans seem to be the government’s answer to everything. If the economy is great, take out a loan! If the economy sucks, take out a loan!

If a tornado drops your house on the Wicked Witch of the East, take out a loan!

Taking the long view, two months isn’t terrible as far as getting an SBA Administrator into place. It took President Bush twice as long to bestow Hector Barreto upon us.

Under the current circumstances, though, these two months have seemed like an eternity.

There is an awful lot of work to be done at the SBA and none of it will get started in earnest until Mills is confirmed. At the same time, none of the rest of us can assess her plans for the agency until she is in place and can provide us with said plans.

There’s also the minor matter of a collapsing economy.

Rumor has it that one of the things of which our new President is enamored is out-of-the-box thinking that is still pragmatic, thinking fueled by data, offering fresh approaches to solving perennial problems.

As much as he may enjoy that sort of thing, I suspect that it will be easier for me to find those sorts of thinkers than it will for him — especially now that he has been officially enclosed in his very own, personalized bubble inside the Beltway Bubble.

It’s cute and quaint to think of microbusinesses as nothing more than the “Mom & Pop” restaurant down the street. And many of them are precisely that. But the fact is that microbusinesses are also developing new business models, new ways of structuring businesses, new products and services, and new ways to add value to existing products and services.

Microbusinesses are cutting edge; they are leading the way into the future. If American capitalism were working properly, these should be the very last firms that have trouble accessing capital.

In many ways, microbusinesses have less to do with economic issues than they have to do with social issues. They are built to create a life rather than merely creating an asset. And their existence is often more about now than later.

That is the Great Microbusiness Crime against the economy, the reason why we are shunned, dismissed and ignored.

Because we value our lives above our wealth.