As as a small business owner for the last 20 years, I have never seen the business climate so bad, and the worse part is there doesn’t seem to be anyone running for any office with a blinding contempt for government overreach, over regulation, and bank examiners and bankers. In the end, we have no one to blame but ourselves for electing a collective body of do nothings as our government. The government desperately needs small businesses to create jobs. That is undeniable. So small businesses are suppose to get individual’s to go out and risk everything to open a business and the government in return is going to offer enough regulation to strangle a horse and then make sure through policy that no capital is available to the business. At the same time they will make money available to banks for zero percent interest and then put no regulation on it.
The regulation should be if you take zero percent interest money then you have to loan it to small business. Right now they can borrow it and put it in 1 or 2 percent CD type mechanisms and make free risk free money. At the same time, they are allowed to basically rape the public with fee’s, overdraft charges, ATM fee;s ect…The government has basically told the banks you can get out of the lending business and make money without doing loans anymore. I would defy anyone to go find one single small business owner and ask him or her if they have access to capital. They do not. So common sense would tell any government official that although they want small businesses to create jobs, there is zero as in absolutely zero chance that that will happen under current policy and regulation. if I had any position in the government I would not tip toe around anyones feelings up there. I would go after their ideas of nonsense with a blinding hate. I would attack the ideas and the person pushing them. I would be looking for arrogant regulators and firing them on the spot when they target a business with stupidity.
Most people have heard of the Gibson Guitar Company. On Aug 24, armed agent (yep armed) from the U.S. and Fish Wildlife Dept. raided the Gibson Guitar Company over the opinion that Gibson had illegally imported exotic wood. Seriously. It gets more insane. If the wood in question had been finished out by workers in another country, then there would be no supposed violation. In short if Gibson used foreign workers to finish the wood rather than Americans, then it is OK. This is insane, but as hard as it is to imagine, it gets worse if that is possible. India’s foreigh trade minister in writing informed the US government that the wood in question in freely exportable and legal. And with all of that, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Department saw fit to arm themselves to the teeth and raid a Guitar factory as if there was going to be a shootout or they were hiding the weapons of mass destruction not found in Iraq.
This is job creating government at it’s best. Now that’s where I would differ as an elected official. If I woke up and read that story, I wouldn’t stop until every last person in management of this agency was fired. I would investigate each fool of this agency to see if a possible crime had been committed by using their agency to create a make believe law and then try to enforce it. Why should victimizing an American Company be legal by our government? How can they cost a business over a million dollars in loss just because a bunch of wannabe cops are looking for a reason to carry a gun. You don’t see these overweight job killing zealots raiding a gang stronghold. Nope. They are going after guitar makers. Wow.
We can’t figure out why the economy can’t get any traction. The complexity eludes us. No access to capital, over regulation, and a government that will go to the extreme of armed raids for nonsense. Where is that guy or woman that just is ready to treat the specific government individuals with as much contempt as they treat small businesses with. We are not going to turn things around with small polite chit chat.
Back in the day when I was a Houston Police Officer, we generally knocked on a door when there was a disturbance of some kind, but there were times when you knew you were in a desperate situation, and you simply kicked the door in because you were in a crisis. We are in a crisis, and it’s a situation that calls for kicking the door in.
and to all you agents who armed up for the guitar company raid, that story isn’t as impressive to your kids as you might think. I’d keep that war story to yourself. It would be a shame to let your kids know from your own lips that you are basically a job killing coward. Hardly the stuff of honorable and brave law enforcement action.