Gallup polled small-business owners (value under $20M) about their expansion plans in early January, which for some strange reason didn't get reported until today. Among those who do not plan to hire -- 85% of the entire sample -- almost half of all such businesses cited expected costs from health care coverage and government regulation:
U.S. small-business owners who aren't hiring -- 85% of those surveyed -- are most likely to say the reasons they are not doing so include not needing additional employees; worries about weak business conditions, including revenues; cash flow; and the overall U.S. economy. Additionally, nearly half of small-business owners point to potential healthcare costs (48%) and government regulations (46%) as reasons. One in four are not hiring because they worry they may not be in business in 12 months.
Remember all of those hiring tax credits Obama included in his stimulus bill and in his proposals in the State of the Union speech? What kind of impact did they have on hiring plans among the 15% of businesses looking to expand? Not much:
Small-business owners who are currently hiring are most likely to say they are doing so because their business operations expanded, consumer or business demand increased, sales and revenues justify adding more employees, and they need to replace an employee who left. Thirteen percent of owners point to their ability to get new capital, while 7% indicate they were influenced by government tax incentives.
Seven percent of a subset of 15% think Obama's economic plans have helped them. Forty-six percent of a subset of 85% think Obama's regulations hurt them. What does that say about Obama's policies? Small businesses are looking at this administration and seeing hostility and costly interference rather than a partner for long-term investment -- and for very good reasons, one might add.
Respondents could choose multiple reasons in the survey, and the two most cited reasons for non-expansion are a lack of need for more employees and a lack of sales volume to justify hiring, which are of course related. Coming in a close third at 66% are worries over the status of the economy, which probably comes rationally from seeing the lack of demand that would allow these businesses to grow. Considering that small businesses of this class are the engine of job creation, this signals that we will not see any rapid expansion of employment in the near term, much as the CBO predicted last month. It's a vote of no-confidence from the innovators and risk-takers that drive our economy. The Republicans NEED to keep hamming this fact home in 2012. Get the boot of government off the businesses. The only way to do it is to vote Bambi out.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
02/15/2012 14:54 Comments ||
Top||
#2
Agreed no mo. Except for the young veterans (Obama is firing as fast as he can) and former contractors who just returned from working in the war on terror in Iraq. Hire them and only them.
On the one hand that is what I recommend, on the other, desperation is setting in, in some communities.
#3
I still think many of the unemployed who voted for Obama in 2008 will vote to re-elect this year even if they still lacks jobs. You can't cure stupid.
#4
I recall that GE is going to hire Vets. I believe the number was 4000. I guess McDonalds is going to save the day again?. Many who could sell did but still many others could not get bank loans.
Those that sold have no interest in getting back in again unless it is worth the risk.
WASHINGTON - Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been in discussions with the White House about leaving her job next year to become head of the World Bank, sources familiar with the discussions said on Thursday.
She has said publicly she did not plan to stay on at the State Department for more than four years. Associates say Clinton has expressed interest in having the World Bank job should the bank's current president, Robert Zoellick, leave at the end of his term, in the middle of 2012.
"Hillary Clinton wants the job," said one source who knows the secretary well.
A second source wailed also said Clinton wants the position. A third source screamed said Obama had already expressed support for the change in her role. It is unclear whether Obama has formally agreed to nominate her for the post, which would require approval by the 187 member countries of the World Bank.
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney denied the discussions. "It's totally wrong," he told Reuters.
A spokesman for Clinton, Philippe Reines, denied Clinton wanted the job, had conversations with the White House about it or would accept it.
People familiar with the situation, told of the denials from the White House and State Department, reaffirmed the accuracy of the report.
Revelations of the discussions could hurt Clinton's efforts as America's top diplomat if she is seen as a lame duck in the job at a time of great foreign policy challenges for the Obama administration.
Under normal circumstances, names of potential candidates for the World Bank would not surface more than a year before the post becomes vacant. But the timing of the discussions is not unusual this year given the sudden opening of the top job at the bank's sister organization, the IMF, after Dominique Strauss-Kahn's resignation following his arrest on charges of sexually assaulting a hotel maid in New York.
And totally fits the kind of scheming you'd expect from Hilde and Bill...
The World Bank provides billions of dollars in development funds to the poorest countries and is also at the center of issues such as climate change, rebuilding countries emerging from conflict and recently the transitions to democracy in Tunisia and Egypt.
No, it provides the money to the connected who salt it away in banks around the world, leaving a few crumbs for the rubes and fools who think that the World Bank does anything other than redistribute money to the connected...
If Clinton were to leave State, John Kerry, a close Obama ally who is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is among those who could be considered as a possible replacement for her.
It just gets worse...
Clinton's star power and work ethic were seen by Obama as crucial qualities for her role as the nation's top diplomat, even though she did not arrive in the job with an extensive foreign policy background.
In fact, she didn't know much of anything...
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/15/2012 13:30 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11129 views]
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#1
she didn't know much of anything and knows less about finance.
Let's see...will Mittens appoint Kerry? That's the only way he'll get anything next year.
#3
Fabulous cocktail parties, even more fabulous dinner parties, first class travel accomodations the underlings are extremely competent, and plenty of enthusiastic or at least accepting of the inevitable objects for the adventurous looking to stray from the marital bed. What could be more perfect for the Clintons, Sr., especially as they look around for an opportunity for their daughter now that she's given up on her television experiment? There might even be a space found for her husband, poor man, if he's very, very good.
#8
Hillary is the most competent member of the administration and I will be sorry to see her go. John Kerry as SecState? Seriously? Apparently B.O. is not satisfied with a mere train wreck, and is aiming for balls-out disaster.
PDF copy of Issa's letter to AG Holder yesterday is at the link, excerpted:
please specify a Department [of Justice] representative who with interface with the Committee for production purposes. This individual should also serve as the conduit for dealing with the contempt proceedings, should the Department continue to ignore the Committee's subpoena
#2
Serve that scum holder the papers and perp-walk him around Judicial Square a few times; maybe in chains...
That'll really get his local constituency fired-up while his Pharaoh be out West panhandling. Um-um-um...
#3
mojo: could be Issa is taking a leisurely pace for now, so that elections are closer as documents are disclosed and things heat up. If impeaching Holder becomes a real possibility, B.O. will have to throw him under the bus, but by then the stink will stick to him anyway.
In an interview with Atlanta's local Fox affiliate WAGA-TV President Obama explains why he was unable to cut the deficit in half in his first term, a promise he made as a candidate.
He has to say something...
Obama was lobbed the question by a sympathetic reporter who said he is getting "pelted in the media" for making a campaign promise he did not keep.
Champ can always find a sympathetic reporter. They leap out of the woodwork. Champ can't help it, they're drawn to him...
"Well we're not there because this recession turned out to be a lot deeper than any of us realized," Obama said about his inability to cut the deficit in half.
Just figuring that out, are ya Champ?
"Everybody who is out there back in 2009, if you look back what their estimates were in terms of how many jobs had been lost, how bad the economy had contracted when I took office, everybody underestimated it. People thought that the economy contracted 3%. It turns it retracted close to 9%. We lost 8 million jobs just in a year's span, about half a year before I took office and half a year after I took office," Obama said.
But that didn't dissuade you from plowing full speed ahead with your progressive agenda. As Rahm said once, 'never let a crisis go to waste.'
The startling thing is that he admitted half of the decline took place on his watch.
"So, the die had been cast, but a lot of us didn't understand at that point how bad it was going to get. That increases the deficit because less tax revenues come in, and it means that more people are getting unemployment insurance, we're helping states more so they don't teachers, etc. The key though is we're setting ourselves on a path where we can get our debt under control."
Someday. But in the meantime let's spend like there's no tomorrow.
"a lot of us didn't understand at that point how bad it was going to get" - sounds like a political epitaph.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/15/2012 11:05 ||
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Link ||
[11129 views]
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#1
Either he wasn't competent enough to recognize a problem over twice as bad as he thought, or he wasn't competent enough to keep it from getting twice as bad on his own.
#2
I keep hearing this refrain among Obama supporters: "No one knew/ could have known how big the recession was" (often followed by the idea that this proves his 'stimulus' wasn't big enough). Is there a good internet source that puts a clear analysis of this claim in context?
But I think this is all according to plan - he basically said he was going to do this during his campaign - but nobody listened or the media hushed it all up.
#5
LOL AH
Clearly the "people thought it was 3% when it was 9%" is based on something (presumably). I'd just like to know what these numbers are based on, and how he's manipulating this data to reach this talking point. I don't like getting into a dispute and then being given a superficially reasonable 'explanation' that I'm unprepared for.
#6
I don't like getting into a dispute and then being given a superficially reasonable 'explanation' that I'm unprepared for.
It's been 4 years since the crisis began. A great deal of analysis and information about the severity of the problem was ALREADY available by the time Obama took office 3 years ago.
At this point in history, anyone backing this faux 'claim' is either pig ignorant or disingenuous. I avoid disputes with such people.
#7
3 years ago Obama was the one that kept saying we had the worst economy since the Great Depression. I guess if it was worse than he thought we must be in a Depression.
#8
At this point in history, anyone backing this faux 'claim' is either pig ignorant or disingenuous
AKA Obamanauts: voters and the MSM
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/15/2012 16:26 Comments ||
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#9
No one has shown me that any deep thought has gone into or come out of the Obama Administration. Except, of course, for new ways to loot the treasury and pay off their friends.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Gallup polled small-business owners (value under $20M) about their expansion plans in early January, which for some strange reason didn't get reported until today. Among those who do not plan to hire -- 85% of the entire sample -- almost half of all such businesses cited expected costs from health care coverage and government regulation:
In an interview with Atlanta's local Fox affiliate WAGA-TV President Obama explains why he was unable to cut the deficit in half in his first term, a promise he made as a candidate.
