Pat C

Small Business Lending: Why the Programs Need to Change

The Health Insurance Mandate & penalty for small business sure isn't going to help things particularly unemployment.

On CIT Group and Nationalized Health Care

Thank you for mentioning the the penalty tax on small business owners. We have a small service firm with 30 P/T employees. We have been in business now 2 years and have grown pretty good. 80% of our costs are payroll and we can't afford to give them health insurance. Our customers are Senior Citizens on fixed incomes. We supported the Health Care reform and public option so our employees could have options that we couldn't afford to provide. We are going to have to lay off the office help, marketing and field supervisor if this thing goes thru, we have no other choice. The business will have to slow down.
We were hopeful and voted for Obama, he never mentioned a small business employer mandate in his campaign, if he buys off on this he will become just another politician.

The Obscenity of Bailouts on Full Display

GS has made me look at the world entirely differently. I have become cynical to the point of paranoia and they just keep feeding my psychological illness. Why any rationale and moral individual (I believe you can be both) or organization (particularly public organizations that should have some responsibility to their shareholder's) would do business with GS after this financial meltdown (particularly AIG's CDS collateral call) is beyond me. GS's sucess is a sad testimony to what we have become: a weak people with no control of our collective destiny.