Will Trump Follow Obama In His Failure To Deliver? – Ep. 219

  • The NFIB Index of Small Business Optimism in the month of December, so this is post the election of Donald Trump
  • Shot up from 98.4 in November to 105.8
  • This is the highest level in 12 years – since before Obama was President
  • And it’s the biggest monthly jump in 37 years
  • You have to go all the way back to 1980, the election of Ronald Regan to find a moment in time where you saw this big an increase in optimism, in confidence among small business owners
  • Remember, it was Michelle Obama not too long ago
  • Saying, “This is horrible, there’s no hope anymore in America!”
  • Well, small business owners haven’t been this hopeful since I was in high school
  • Why are they so optimistic?
  • Well, first of all, it’s more a testimony to how horrible things have been over the last 8 years
  • People are just hopeful that now there’s going to be some relief, that Barack Obama is gone
  • Because the lat 8 years have been very, very difficult for small businesses
  • First of all, if you’re running a small business, you can’t take advantage of zero percent interest rates
  • You can’t just show up at the discount window and borrow from the Fed
  • Also, you can’t sell bonds into the bond market, like big corporations can
  • If you’re a small business, and you need credit, you’ve got to go to a bank and get a loan
  • But the banks don’t have any money – there’s no savings – nobody’s putting money into the bank
  • And no banker wants to carry a risky loan on his books
  • When he can just own U.S. Treasuries
  • The regulators are all over you, if you actually make a loan to a business
  • So businesses haven’t gotten capital
  • Meanwhile the cost of doing business has gone up because there’s been all sorts of regulations that have been added to the burden of business
  • Over the lat 8 years