Act of Desperation

ABC's Good Morning America plans to broadcast a feature tomorrow on people starting new businesses that they were promoting this morning. The spin ABC will offer is most likely to be an attempt to renew optimism while acknowledging that things have been better at other times in the economy. No one should have too much confidence in an economy that figures once again unexpectedly (as Obama's pocket sages never see the obvious coming) show unemployment rising to its highest level in three months with 25,000 new jobless after the so-called experts predicted that the rate of unemployment would continue to diminish. The entrepreneurial spirit has always existed in America, but the people starting businesses now are not necessarily doing so because they think the economy is healing under Obama's stewardship. Even in the best of times about seventy percent of new businesses fail and in these troubled times that percentage will likely be even higher. Many of those taking the risk of opening today are doing so because they see no other choice. They are being made redundant or cashiered out often at advanced ages where despite their experience and long term track records with one company, no one else will hire them. They are too young for pensions or their companies have closed and what they had expected to retire on has vanished into the ether. So, they are taking their family savings, or what they can borrow from friends since banks are not, by in large, lending, or are starting with a Small Business Administration loan from Uncle Karl (prior to the Obama administration, I would have said Uncle Sam but today our bureaucrats are behaving much more like they are acting in a system created by Marx). Many of these pioneers starting their companies are doing so as one last shot, not a sign that things are going well but that no other opportunity to find gainful employment and support their families exists for them in Obama's America.