Russ: This is a BusinessMakers WebXtra, a continuation of the radio broadcast with Victor Cheng, America's small business coach and author of The Recession Proof Business.Well we sort of touched upon this subject and it's popped up in several that I've had along the way and that is why isn't the administration that seems to be able to get almost anything rolling like they want it, why have they not focused on small business? Even though there's kind of been hints at it, why haven't they? That's where all the jobs can be created.
Victor: Yeah. You got me. I mean that's been my sort of big criticism of the Obama administration and I feel like I have earned the right to complain. I voted for the guy so I respect him. I just disagree with what he's doing particularly as it relates to getting this economy turned around, and in particular if you look at the small business administration, which is clearly a part of the Obama administration, their own research over the past ten years show that small businesses out produce, in terms of job creation, out produce big businesses. So roughly seven out of every ten new jobs in this country are produced by small businesses, not by big ones, and we all know that if we wanna get this economy turned around we have to get rid of unemployment, so it just boggles my mind as to why we'd bail out the big companies that can't produce jobs and ignore the little ones that do.
Russ: It just sort of brings it back to me Victor that we're talking about major steps in the direction of socialism.
Victor: You know it sure feels that way, Russ and I think that's been my big concern. It's really easy to buy yourself popularity by throwing yourself a couple trillion dollars, but at some point we got to pay the money back, and that concerns me quite a lot. When I give talks about the recession and the economy, one of the things I always say is that it's complete incontrovertible is that when you borrow a trillion dollars just to make the economy, one thing is very clear, you still owe a trillion dollars. That's gonna be a long-term drag on this economy. Unfortunately I think that's sort of been overlooked a little bit.
Russ: But all of the legislation, the cap and trade, healthcare, the cash for clunkers, all of them are just giving away money and putting burdens on lots of businesses simultaneously. I mean I don't see how we're gonna withstand it.
Victor: Well I think what's gonna happen realistically is at some point we pay for that and that usually comes in the form of taxes. We're in an economy that's not going very fast in the long run, so I think you're right. It will come back and hit us and probably is already.
Russ: Let's just say for a second that all of a sudden everybody got sick of what is going on and they anointed Victor Cheng as the President of United States by edict and you suddenly had this huge mess on your hands. What would you do if you were there?
Victor: If I were in charge I'd do it all over from the start. I would have done probably the very first phase of the financial bailout. I used to work in banking when I was at McKenzie. I knew a lot of big banks and if one big bank fails, they all fail, so customers don't have credit cards, you can't pay their payroll. That was clearly an issue. I would've done that, but that phase ended fairly quickly. I probably would not have done the stimulus and sort of the auto bailouts we see. Instead encourage the economy to recover faster, and unfortunately for an economy to recover from a form and structure that it really was never meant to be in to one that's more sustainable long term, there's unfortunately unemployment. I probably would've bumped up unemployment benefits to sort of help use the human condition if you would. If I would've put money anywhere I would've put it in making business funding available for small businesses, typically ones that were doing well, which I think is the big shame of all of this. It's not that the bad small businesses aren't getting money, it's the good ones that aren't and I have lots of clients who are doing extremely well, growing, trying to hire, and they wanna grow faster and add more jobs even faster and the difficult getting capital is definitely there, so I do those two big things.
Russ: Okay. Thanks again and we wanna stay in touch with you, Victor.
Victor: Okay. It was a pleasure to be here.
Russ: And that wraps up this WebXtra interview with Victor Cheng, America's small business coach and author of The Recession Proof Business. You're listening to the Businessmakers show heard here and online at thebusinessmakers.com.
