Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Wall Street profits while Main Street is still suffering
The Index of Small Business Optimism fell 0.3 points in May to 90.9--the third monthly decline in a row. The proximate cause is the fact that 1 in 4 owners still report weak sales as their top business problem.“Corporate profits may be at a record high, but businesses on Main Street are still scraping by,” said NFIB chief economist Bill Dunkelberg. “Washington is throwing misdirected policies at the problem, offering tax breaks for hiring and equipment investment, but acting surprised when they don’t bear any fruit. The failure to understand why small-business owners are not hiring or investing has resulted in a set of policies that have not been very effective, and Main Street is suffering. The icing on the cake: the growing debt, large deficits, threats of higher taxes, regulations being spewed out by state and local administrations, and the uncertainty of the new health care law—is it any wonder that optimism is down?”
