In and under the financial wagons

Investors had a big ol’ hootenanny at the end of last week. And when they finally woke up Monday, they had a collective hangover that looked a lot like the onset of clinical depression.

On Friday, they thought the cavalry had arrived to save them and all those sorry, overextended,  who-cares-make-hay hucksters who took over the banking and loan industries while the government winked and held the doors open. They saw charging horses and flashing weapons and cheered their own salvation with a whooping, hollering orgy of piling back into the wagons they’d just crawled under … only to realize when the dust cleared that it was merely George W. Custer in a cowboy hat, waving his fountain pen at the head of a tattered, debt-ridden regiment of federal spendthrifts.  

And even though they – and we – would like to believe that a couple of signatures can give this movie a happy ending, deep down we know that this is likely no summertime Hollywood western (“Buckaroo Bailout” ?), but a long, grim, anguishing Bergman flick the likes of “Autumn Sonata.”

When the economy tanks, entrepreneurs are often the ones sucked under with it, as a story in the small-business section of Monday’s New York Times points out. It figures: We’re smaller, with fewer clients or customers, fewer resources. Some are already facing reality, closing or selling their enterprises and going back to corporate life. It’s not a guarantee of safety, but at least the paychecks there are steadier and usually come with health insurance.

How do you know when it’s time to fold? When you’re out of money? Or when you’re out of hope? I’m a first-time entrepreneur and have no answer, but I can guess that the need to eat has a way of dissolving dreams quickly. Still, as long as the whole world doesn’t collapse, some of us will keep going, biding our time and winterizing our little companies so they’ll survive the coming harsh season somehow, while we take on second jobs.

Could the cavalry have a real leader in its ranks? Or will we have to hold out until one appears out of our own midst? I have no idea. But the real entrepreneurs among us may start raising chickens inside that circle of wagons.

What kind of dough gets your vote?

Barack Obama had some words for me last night.

He said, “We measure the strength of our economy, not by the number of billionaires we have or the profits of the Fortune 500, but by whether someone with a good idea can take a risk and start a new business.”

A little later, he spoke to me even more directly. “And when I hear a woman talk about the difficulties of starting her own business or making her way in the world, I think about my grandmother, who worked her way up from the secretarial pool to middle management, despite years of being passed over for promotions because she was a woman.”

He was speaking to you, too. For eight years now, we’ve all seen our economy turn into a feudal system where the resources and the future belong only to a tiny number of extremely wealthy, privileged people.  These people – the heads of major corporations, scions of rich families, big donors and personal friends of the politically powerful - have gotten richer and richer from insanely outsized salaries, golden parachutes, enormous bonuses, stock options and personal and corporate tax breaks while millions of ordinary people have tumbled into financial uncertainty or poverty.

To George W. Bush and his cadre, it has been more important to indulge the pathological greed of already moneyed people than to help the working poor and middle class keep their jobs and be able to afford food, heat, transportation, medical care and education.  This policy, if you can call it that, doesn’t make sense even for the rich – who will work in their industries and provide their services if everyone but them and their friends is too sick or unschooled or immobilized by gas prices to hold down what jobs remain? 

Obama has it right. The vitality and success of America come from its grassroots, from the creativity and initiative of its individual citizens. And all that has been largely ignored and neglected for eight years in which catastrophic wrongheadedness and decline have brought America to the brink of what, with all the home foreclosures and bank failures, has looked at times more like the coming of another Great Depression than a recession.       

So when Obama says he wants to eliminate the capital-gains taxes for small businesses and start-ups that create the high-paying, high-tech jobs that offer one of our nation’s best hopes for a prosperous future, I don’t just hear an idea that would help me keep Geniocity.com alive and growing. I hear a change in the wind, a hint that everyday Americans may once again, in time, be able to thrive and realize their best ideas and dreams through their own hard work, no matter who they are or how modest their circumstances.

For two terms now, Bush’s actions have said “let them eat cake.” John McCain wants to stay that course. But Obama wants to make it possible for each of us to make a better loaf of bread and own the bakery that produces it.

Can we afford to vote for anyone but him?