No Recovery In Sight for Small Business

Wall Street and Washington financial gurus may be seeing “green shoots” of economic recovery, but small businesses are still stuck in the mud, Kevin Kelly writes in Newsweek. Kelly, the CEO of a bag manufacturing company, says too many colleagues' businesses are losing sales, laying off workers, or shutting down altogether. “Call us pessimists, but we're not sure the green shoots aren't just weeds,” he writes.

Still, Kelly wonders if pessimism is its own worst enemy. Worried about debt, he has instinctively avoided major new investments; his like-minded customers are making smaller orders. But doesn't that thinking prevent recovery? If “I wait, and lots of other businesspeople like me wait,” Kelly writes, “what will become of those green shoots that may be dotting the landscape?”