The Small Business Optimism Index fell 2.5 points to 97.9, giving back the December gain that took the Index over 100. Still, the Index indicates that the small business sector is operating in a somewhat “normal” zone. Seven components fell, one was unchanged and 2 rose a bit. Most of the decline was accounted for by expected business conditions (43 percent of the decline), expected real sales (14 percent) and earnings (14 percent). The good news was the increase in the percent of owners reporting hard to fill openings and the drop of only 1 point in the net percent of owners planning job creation from December’s very good number.

In spite of the rather poor state of government economic policy, the private sector is managing to push ahead. GDP growth in Q4 was initially reported at 2.6 percent, revisions seem to be all positive these days. The data collection is running behind the economy. The revisions to November and December jobs numbers were absurdly large. Why investors pay attention is a mystery, the market just likes to bet on something.

The acceleration in growth follows the Federal Reserve’s termination of the quantitative easing buying sprees. The Fed has taken interest rates down far enough to be more than attractive, but growth prospects (cash flow, profits) are only mediocre. Money isn’t cheap if it can’t be deployed profitably. Buying a trillion dollars of bonds doesn’t produce jobs, the Fed has proved that. And the “wealth effect” from higher stock and bond prices did little to move the economy. Long term rates on Treasury securities will remain low as long as the Fed continues to hoard trillions of dollars in Treasury bonds and the deficit remains low (fewer bonds issued by the Treasury). There is a strong demand for low risk and risk free assets. Treasuries are the best, and so demand for them will keep interest rates low.

While the Administration wants to raise taxes and make it harder to exploit our energy assets (no Keystone, attempts to take Alaska out of the energy business), the private sector has pushed the economy forward, even delivering a nice reduction in energy costs. If gas is $1 lower in cost for a year, the improvement to disposable income is over $100 billion. However, the rapid decline in oil prices will create a lot of instability in employment and capital spending as drilling is down substantially in the U.S. And countries depending on oil revenue to run their governments are in serious trouble.

The average work week in manufacturing is over 40 hours now. Small manufacturers continue to do well with strong job creation plans and plentiful job openings. Apparently the IRS wants to be a job creator as well, asking for over 9,000 new positions in the budget to enforce Obamacare regulations. Their work will count as additional GDP, more workers working on taking something rather than producing a useful service or product. Overall, job creation plans were solid across the board, but especially in Construction, Professional Services, and Manufacturing with the help of strong car sales including the bestselling luxury car defined as $50,000 or higher in price, Ford’s F150 truck.

Currently, it appears that the level of cooperation between Congress and the President remains low, so prospects of addressing the top issues for small business owners are not good. The U.S. is about the only functioning major economy, so it’s good to be here even if prospects aren’t as rosy as they could be with a “normalization” of monetary, fiscal and regulatory policies. The small business sector is contributing more to growth now, but still far below its potential. Policy remains a growth deterrent.