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NFIB Small Business Optimism Index gained 2.3 points to 100.4
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The Small Business Optimism Index gained 2.3 points to 100.4 in December, at long last taking the Index back to its pre-recession average and the highest reading since October 2006. While last month’s gain was accounted for just 2 of the 10 Index components (expected business conditions and real sales), the gain in December was broad-based, with 8 components advancing, one unchanged and one declining by just 1 percentage point. The single component posting a decline was expected business conditions 6 months out. Last month, this component posted a 16 point gain, so the 1 percentage point decline simply confirmed the very strong gain in November.
The BEA reported a blow-out economy in Q3 and Q4 appears to have been OK. But “low rates for too long” never produced the spending surge the Federal Reserve expected. As pointed out years ago in this report, the economy would heal itself in spite of the impediments and distortions government policy put in place, allowing the Federal Reserve to declare “victory” even if its policies were counterproductive as many observers and even some Federal Reserve officials believed. The cost of the QEs is far from clear and remain to be determined. Certainly QE1 was the right move, but only financial markets were the primary beneficiaries of subsequent actions, not the real economy. Fiscal and regulatory policy have provided no help, forcing firms to spend more of their scarce resources complying with record amounts of regulation and leaving the budget and tax policy floating without direction. The budget deficit has declined by a trillion dollars mostly without the benefit of major spending cuts or priority realignments.
So, it took 4½ years from the start of the recovery for the Index of Small Business Optimism to reach its pre-recession average, slogging along, and never once posting an above average reading. Assuming that non-member firms are similar to NFIB members as they are certainly subject to the same economic winds, half of the economy was not participating in the “recovery”, a bifurcated economy. Large firms profited, sending profits and the stock market to record levels, but that success was not shared on Main Street.
The recovery of Main Street which consists of about 5.5 million firms with fewer than 20 employees, can provide a good base for stronger economic growth. But any election euphoria that persists will soon be snuffed out if Congress cannot lay out a positive plan and make some progress on the top problems facing small business owners including: health insurance costs, uncertainty about economic policy, energy costs, the cost of regulations and red tape and the tax code which is too confiscatory, too complex, and changed too often. Prospects for progress are not that good with President Obama still holding his veto pen.
Posted: January 13, 2015 Tuesday 07:30 AM