With the fear of our government shutting down, the Obama health care plan coming into effect today, and all those businesses uncertainties we seem to be dealing with these days, we are bringing you some of the most recent articles dealing with information and answers to some of the questions you may have about the government shutdown and the Obama health care plan.
What impact would shutdown have on small business?
Q: Will the government shutdown (if it happens) have an effect on my business? — Taylor
A: The short answer is that the only effect any shutdown may have is if your business does direct business with the government. If you contract with the government, or get payments from them, then yes, a shutdown would have a negative effect on your business.
More broadly, it’s hard to imagine a group less effective, less professional or more shortsighted than these elected “leaders.”
GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN: What to know
If any of us ran our businesses the way they run the country, we would be bankrupt.
Can you imagine running a business this way? Lurching from crisis to crisis, not paying your bills, verging on defaulting on your creditors, threatening to default on your creditors — it is business (and political) malpractice.
Government shutdown leaves small business loans in limbo, shutters SBA
Congress’s failure to pass a spending bill has brought a halt to the U.S. Small Business Administration’s ability to process new loan requests as part of the broader government shutdown.
In the weeks and days leading up to the shutdown, bankers flooded the agency with loan-guarantee applications, racing to secure funding before the lights went out.
“We could read the tea leaves and see we were heading this way, so lenders have been working overtime to get the applications done and in to the SBA,” Tony Wilkinson, president and chief executive of the National Association of Government Guaranteed Lenders, an organization comprised of roughly 750 small-business lenders, said in an interview late Monday.
Small business borrowing rises in August, slowly
Borrowing by U.S. small businesses edged up in August, pushing an index of borrowing to a six-year high.
The Thomson Reuters/PayNet Small Business Lending Index, which measures the volume of financing to small companies, rose 1 percent to 116.6, the highest level since August 2007. The index registered 115.4 in July, revised from an initial reading of 117.7, PayNet said on Tuesday.
Historically, PayNet’s lending index has correlated to overall economic growth one or two quarters in the future.
The reading came as investors were boosting expectations the Federal Reserve would likely reduce its massive stimulus program in September.
