8 responses so far ↓

• 1 Steve Magruder (I, not D or R) // Dec 10, 2009 at 4:13 pm

  At best, this is just more of Mayor Jer’s infamous political tin ear on issues that really matter to the community.

• 2 chief // Dec 10, 2009 at 6:41 pm

  How true, that list was comprised of names that the Mayor knew wouldn”t challange him to any difficult questions , or opinions, or make any real responses. I’m sure it was a LUV fest and all felt priviliged they were in the presence of the His Honor!

• 3 Mark H (Not Hebert) // Dec 10, 2009 at 10:14 pm

  Unfortunately, the root of the stagnation is related to the current lack of real estate value equity.

  If you quiz most small business owners, they had to put up their homes, equipment, or commercial real estate as collateral to obtain their small business loans. If those assets have no value on paper, they are worthless as collateral.

  This equity, which was generated by the rising real estate market, provided the engine behind the boom economy of the mid-2000s. Businesses used the equity to secure business loans and lines of credit, and homeowners cashed out their equity and used it to spur consumer spending.

  Lenders made very few unsecured small business loans before the banking collapse, and they still doing the same. While lenders have become more conservative, the lack of available real estate equity to secure these small business loans has greatly reduced their ability to lend to small businesses.

  Until enough time passes to build up the loan to value spreads or the government backs these loans without any collateral outlay, I don’t see any silver bullets out there for small businesses.

  While I think a reduction in tax rates may spur hiring in solvent companies, I have to be honest in saying that I don’t see any help coming soon for struggling small businesses or start-ups.

• 4 Barack Obama // Dec 11, 2009 at 9:13 am

  Half of these people are trust fund guys who never had to sweat it out like a traditional small business person.

• 5 jake // Dec 11, 2009 at 9:15 am

  Not all small business folks have to sweat it out. I think it’d even be fine for someone to have inherited a successful small business. Or grow up wealthy but still know what it’s like to operate a small business.

  But.

  Small business folks actually, you know, own and operate small businesses. Something that almost no one on this list can ever speak to.

• 6 Bill // Dec 11, 2009 at 11:12 am

  Jerry doesn’t deal with reality and never has. It’s all about how you can cook up whatever fantasy he currently has and how can send that fantasy to the media so the public can buy into it. I’m glad to see that the public is increasingly looking at this and seeing the guy is full of it.

  Jerry must have forgotten his roots because supposedly his father was in the mom and pop grocery business. Seems that he works in ways that are against the small business community and the average person just trying to get by and pay their bills.

  After all, he has spent 25 years shedding jobs in the local area since people are increasingly poor and losing jobs that once paid the mortgage, food, etc. Now we’re running along in a city full of service jobs that barely pay rent if that and many people are getting food stamps and government assistance.

  Personally, this writer thinks that it is time to start focusing on the average person and getting a healthy city both politically and economically. 25 years of Jerry Abramson is just 25 years of inflated salaries to pay someone to sit in the office and get rich off the average taxpayer.

  The sad thing is that for most of the 25 years, there’s been no one with enough pull or power to evict the crook. Which is why his 25 year reign of economic destruction, political ploys, and lies has continued.

  One has to question how the city ends up 29 million dollars in the hole while the last couple of years, he was all about transparency and saying everything was great. One has to question the motives of such an individual. If there is discrepancies in finances, this seems to be a good time for Crit Luallen and other governmental agencies at the state and federal level to step in and look at the books.

• 7 Mark H (Not Hebert) // Dec 11, 2009 at 11:56 am

  At what point do we realize that the majority of jobs that have been lost have been unskilled jobs and that there are skilled jobs that are going unfilled.

  These unskilled jobs are not going to come back and we need to be focused on education and training as a solution to the unemployment problem, not extending unemployment or giving handouts.

• 8 Bill // Dec 14, 2009 at 9:12 am

  I’m not sure that one could classify manufacturing jobs as being unskilled employment. I’ve heard that argument many times but it takes a certain amount of skill and common sense to do a lot of the jobs that were lost over the past 20 to 30 years.

  Other than skilled trades like construction, plumbing, electrical, etc. I’m not sure a lot of the existing jobs require much in the way of skills that are going to be marketable and pay a solid wage. Somehow, a service economy in many ways produces little in the way of manufactured goods or anything of production that could be used to build wealth.

  If people think we can build wealth by starting cafes everywhere and cutting each others hair, I would like to see everyone do it. But for some reason, those skills like building equipment, metalwork, sheet metal, auto parts fabrication, welding, etc are going to be needed in the future.

  I don’t see where someone working in a grocery store, fast food outlet, video store, gas station, or doing menial service jobs is going to get much of anywhere. One could also argue that its just as easy to offshore a lot of office occupations due to technology and communications improvements where different jobs can be done in India, Eastern Europe, or other places where English is spoken and understood by masses of people.

  Much like the underemployment that is hitting a lot of well educated people with degrees, etc. One might think the global economy is a good thing but somehow wasting years of education and talents while offshoring US based work isn’t going to help anyone but the owners of enterprises and to a small extent, the offshore workers.

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