Since the national economy almost collapsed a little more than twelve months ago, the crying need has been for new jobs and better jobs to replace the millions upon millions of jobs that were lost and which, we believe, are not coming back for a long, long, time.
The president is talking about creating jobs. The governor is talking about it – but not many jobs are being created.
In fact, locally, more jobs continue to be lost from month to month than are being made.
Now there is talk about making money available to small businesses as no money is available for small businesses.
You’d have to be a small businessman to understand this.
Small businessmen and women can go into the bank to ask for money to save their companies but none is available unless you want to mortgage your children – and banks aren’t interested in collateral that has to be fed and clothed.
Giving small businesses money to operate or to expand is all well and good – but small businesses can’t just hire more employees. They need more customers first.
With Americans spending less and less and cutting back on credit card debt and purchases, there is less and less business to go around.
The economy is a hard thing to figure out when it goes bad.
It is an even harder thing to fix.
We’d be perfect if we could go back to the time before the collapse of the big banks and the automobile industry last year.
Right now, we face the unknown – and no one seems to know the way.