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Policy Matters: Poised on the Brink of History
a weekly column
by Dawn Rivers Baker
Last Tuesday was a rather amazing experience for us, wasn't it?
While the state of mind of McCain supporters probably defied description, certainly those who backed Barack Obama seemed to verge on delirium.
Some of it was about making history, of course. We Americans are cream puffs about those moments when we get to experience our own greatness.
Like a lot of other people, I will confess to being quite delighted over Mr. Obama's victory, on a number of different levels — not least of which was the shattering of a barrier that I did not believe I would live long enough to see.
If you have any doubts about how moving that alone is for millions of African Americans in this country, no matter who they are, search the Web for videos of the emotional reactions of both Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice after Obama's victory.
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This week's news briefs
Change We Might Be Able To Believe In
The results of the U.S. presidential election would seem to be old news by now — not that the passage of a mere six days have stopped journalists and columnists from writing about him, his historic election, and what John McCain did wrong, ad nauseum. So, while many pundits are still hyperventilating over the shock of an America that would elect an unabashedly cerebral African-American as its president, there is the small matter of an economy that has frequently been described as "faltering" in recent news accounts — which has to be one of the great understatements of our time.
The National Association for the Self-Employed (NASE) is viewing an impending Obama Administration with tempered optimism. On the one hand, some of the proposals fielded by the Obama campaign were promising, especially their emphasis on access to capital. At the same time, areas of continuing concern are health care and tax policy. Kristie Darien, executive director of the NASE's legislative office, said during an interview that they will be keeping a close eye on issues such as Obama's health care initiative in the individual market, the tax gap, tax reform and the status of independent contractors. Overall, we'll give the incoming Obama team the benefit of the doubt and give them lots of rope for self-hanging.
Report Reviews Third Quarter Small Biz Economy
"The U.S. economy experienced weaknesses in the third quarter, as real gross domestic product fell 0.3 percent." Thus begins the SBA Office of Advocacy's quarterly economic report, didactically entitled Third Quarter 2008: The Economy and Small Business. This was not among the most aesthetically pleasing of these reports; the red ink flowed liberally with news that is already depressingly familiar. Unemployment is up, consumer spending is down, inflation is up, lending is down, and the third quarter of this year lives in infamy as the first contraction of the real gross domestic product since 2002.
Not all the news was bad - there was employment growth in a few sectors and oil prices have cratered so gas prices are down. Microbusiness owners, however, are likely to experience a lot more pain during this recession than they did during the last one, because finding customers with money they are willing to part with will be no easy feat. About the best money to be made right now will be selling to the government and the paperwork involved won't be easy for a microbusiness owner to deal with. Best news for survival may be the simple fact that microbusinesses tend to be inexpensive to operate.
The Domestic Micro-Credit Gap
Late last month, the Social Venture Network announced the recipients of its 2008 Innovations Awards, one of which was Jonathan Lewis, founder of MicroCredit Enterprises. MicroCredit Enterprises is a private sector anti-poverty program that helps to fund microcredit programs. It's innovation was to guarantee the loans that microfinance organizations use to capitalize their loan funds, only the money for the guarantees comes from socially conscious, high net worth individual investors. It's a great idea but it has one big problem: it is not available to U.S.-based microenterprise development organizations.
It's a peculiar thing that so many philanthropists want to combat poverty in the third world but are not inclined to do anything about it here. And, among those who do want to fight poverty on American soil, microenterprise development does not seem to be their cause-of-choice, in spite of its sustainable ‘teach a man to fish' model. There have been some hints that federal support for microenterprise development will be more forthcoming from an Obama Administration, even if some tweaking will need to be done to their intial proposals. But it would be helpful if there were more social entrepreneurs working their magic here in this country, in addition to confining their focus to similar efforts overseas.
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