Small Business Will Lead Us Out Of The Recession

American big business has its place. Small businesses are not geared to build airplanes, or ships, or oil rigs in the Caribbean. Big business needs a public corporate structure, selling stock on Wall Street, to raise enough risk capital to compete in world markets. I am a conservative, and as such I believe government has a responsibility to create a level playing field, and to keep any one corporation from gaining a monopoly position in the marketplace. Otherwise, government should stay out of the private sector.

I do not believe any free enterprise business is “too big to fail” and thus should be taken over and bailed out by government. If a big business fails, it should go down the tubes just as a small business will. More than 50% of American families own publicly traded stock and that is good for the business, the investor and the American economy. But it is, and always has been, the small businesses that drive the American economy. And it will be the risk-taking, highly competitive, inventive, entrepreneurial business that will lead us out of this recession; not the big guys, and certainly not the federal government.

The Greater Hall Chamber of Commerce had a small business marketing seminar the other day, and it didn’t make news in Washington or on Wall Street, but it should have. The news people only reported on the Obama stimulus plan. That is now estimated at $1.5-trillion, and only $15-billion has been pledged to boost lending to the 39-million small businesses nationwide. The federal stimulus money is aimed at stabilizing Wall Street, or saving the biggest banks, or salvaging what is left of American car companies. Our neighbors and friends who own and run the little businesses will lead us out of this financial mess we are in, and bless their hearts, they will have to do it on their own...but they will.

This is Gordon Sawyer from a window on historic Green Street.