Small Business

Fear, in any real market, is a natural emotion. There is the fear of not making a sale, not landing a job, not winning a client. Such fear is healthy, even constructive. It prods us to polish our wares, to refine our skills, and to conjure up -- every so often -- a wonder. But these days, we see a different kind of fear in the eyes of America’s entrepreneurs and professionals.

This is the second column in a series by Bruce Jentleson, Professor at Duke University, and Jay Pelosky, Principal of J2Z Advisory. It originally appeared on the Huffington Post.

In putting forth his jobs program, President Obama faced a difficult dilemma: propose a program that could gain Republican support or a more ambitious program that would actually get the economy back on a path of recovery and job creation.

Conservative Utah has bucked the national GOP trend of embracing hard-line — and arguably inhumane — laws meant to make states inhospitable to illegal immigrants. Two weeks ago, Utah Gov. Gary R. Herbert signed into law a bill that will grant work permits, and a path to legal residence, to undocumented immigrants and their immediate families.

And conservative Arizona, which last year passed the anti-immigrant law known as SB 1070, defeated a second slate of such measures, including one that sought to deny birthright citizenship to the U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants.

The opening theme of the 2011 State of the Union address, and the theme that the President has carried forward since then, was his insistence that the nation has at long last emerged from economic crisis.  He said: “Two years after the worst recession most of us have ever known, the stock market has come roaring back.  Corporate profits are up.  The economy is growing again.  And after two years of job losses, we’ve added private-sector jobs for 12 straight months -- more than 1 million in all.”

In his 2011 State of the Union, President Obama outlined a sweeping program for economic transformation, resting on innovation, education, infrastructure, deficit reduction, and governmental reform. The New America Foundation asks whether these are the right “pillars” of a national agenda.  

Click here to download the slideshow, "A Recovery at Risk."

The Great Recession has put enormous strain on the American social contract, exposing not only the many holes in our social safety net but also the weaknesses in its basic design and philosophy.

The bill passed the Senate on Thursday and will return to the House, where a similar version of the measure was passed in June.

Small businesses will benefit from increased credit from community banks as well as tax relief. But these benefits are likely to be overshadowed by other factors: Banks have to be healthy enough to lend, and small businesses have to demand the loans. The bill’s tax credits, while helpful to many small businesses, will probably not guide business decisions to expand and grow the economy.

In Afghanistan and Iraq, U.S. troops often use ultra-high-tech cameras whose images enable them, at a safe distance, to identify their targets, develop a plan of attack, and, everyone hopes, avoid civilian casualties. Those images are projected on a screen, the better for the entire team to view them. That screen is held steady on a wire stand, which allows for hands-free operation. And that stand is manufactured by Marlin Steel Wire Products.