Protactix

The short answer is Obama is doing less than nothing.

It is most likely that a rarely spoken of  agenda in the progessive movement is the destruction of small business.  The progressive talks about assisting the little guy (or person), but the progressive Democrat is speaking only about assisting the “worker”, not the small business operator.

Don’t believe me?

Then why is the Obama administration supporting only the big (wall street, insurance, manufacturing, banking) companies while at the same time letting the small companies drown?

The Obama clique’s pressure to cut off auto dealers, let part suppliers go down, and crush individual bondholders and small pension funds as part and parcel of the Chrysler and GM bankruptcy tells the truth about Obama’s unspoken goal to be sure that the individual thinker who risks to start and run a small business is to be replace by the collective “worker”.

It’s fair to ask why that would be in the interest of a “man of the people”  ( as Obama and his coterie portray him)?

My take is that it is the desire to control.

The progressive Democrat is not evil, he or she simply believes that central government control will result in a more predictable life for all people (citizens or not).  With central government control of virtually every facet of life, the lows of society won’t be as low.  Hard times will be kinder, and the lazy, ignorant or indolent will suffer less, and the cruelty of competitive life will be tempered; So, taking the broad view of society, things will just be better for more people with more government control.  Less government controls allows freedom of investment and thought which results in inequality and therefore, misery (for some).

Hopefully the progressive Democrat is the wave of the future, because even a cursory study of the past establishes that central government control, however laudable its expressed goals, has repeated yielded only world wide societal misery.  (if you can’t think immediately of at least five examples, please stop reading-there must be something fun on MTV)

Without question, it is easier for the government to control the populace if they work for a government owned company (Chrysler)  or a government controlled company (Bank of America).  By controlling the work environment, the work rules, the criteria for hiring, firing and  advancement, much less the pay, the government controls the worker.

By contrast, the central government has much less control over the small business person.  The central government simply can’t monitor the daily activity of the small business owner or even their employees.

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After talking with more than one (and less than fifteen) bank officers and business owners, my take is that reality has set in.

Reality for me is that banks have realized that they are not very good at businesses besides banking.

OK, I know, it may be true that banks aren’t even very good at banking, but hold that thought for now.

This means what? Let’s talk first about construction/development and other small business loans.

Some time ago, (how long ago varies from industry to industry and depends also on the area of the country), banks believed that loan defaults were caused by deadbeats or profligate spenders.  Banks universally abhor deadbeats and profligate spenders.

The result: a search and destroy approach to loan collection.  For a while in late 2007 and early 2008, the aggressive gun-slinger special assets officer was the hero.  The attitude was “nail the deadbeats”

Unfortunately for all of us, including the banks, the economy got worse.  Many borrowers, although current on their loan payments,  became “defaults” simply because the collateral the bank held as collateral lost value and lost value and lost value.

This downward spiral not only affected the property owned by borrowers, but also the “repossessed” property owned by the banks.

What is even worse for the banks was and is that bank owned property is worth even less than identical property held by a non bank owner.

Why?  First, banks aren’t good at owning and maintaining  physical assets.  They don’t have the staff or the expertise to maintain a house or a piece of machinery so that it can be resold at a price to recoup the banks’ investment.  Second, time is not on their side.  They are not permitted, in some cases by regulatory requirements, to hold repossessed assets for more than a relatively short period of time.     Even if they can hold certain assets for some period of time, these sorts of assets cannot produce even a small amount of ongoing revenue, especially bad when banks need all the revenue they can get.  Banks typically can’t wait for the economy to turn around to sell assets that are otherwise depreciating.

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