Memo to D.C.: Main Street is fed up
A funny thing happened on the way to whatever this so-called economic recovery is: Confidence among the nation’s biggest companies has come back some while that of owners of small businesses – which represent the vast majority of employers – remains depressed.
The recent report on small business confidence by the National Federation of Independent Business said it all: “Small business owners entered 2010 the same way they left 2009, depressed,” the group said.
That, said Brian Pretti, senior vice president for Mechanics Bank and manager of that institution’s $1.4 billion in client investments, goes to the heart of Washington’s economic policy failures. Wall Street is rolling in government handouts while virtually nothing has gotten to Main Street – except the specter of more regulation, new federal and state mandates and higher taxes.
That is no way to spur a broad economic recovery and job creation, although Mr. Pretti, speaking to Thursday’s 2010 Sonoma State University Economic Outlook Conference, said Washington at some point will be forced to change when people make their voices heard.
“A lot of people are getting it,” he said about the rising anger over inaction on the economy.
Being heard and speaking with one voice was, after all, the point of the conference, “The Time is Now: Developing a regional strategy to attract and retain jobs.”
Mr. Pretti’s other point was that besides becoming more politically active, business and investors face a new economic reality going forward. That is, the long economic expansions the U.S. became accustomed to and policy makers propped up over the last two-and-a-half decades likely will not reoccur.
Instead of expansions that stretched an unusually lengthy eight years, times of economic growth are more likely to match the post-war average of less than four years.
The message for business, said Mr. Pretti, is to plan for economic cycles that occur more frequently and to maintain flexibility in the face of rapid change.
And equally important is to speak more loudly about the policies and ineffective spending that are destroying jobs and impeding recovery.
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