From Gallup:

Small-business owners in the United States are most likely to say complying with government regulations (22%) is the most important problem facing them today, followed by consumer confidence in the economy (15%) and lack of consumer demand (12%).

Rounding out small-business owners’ top five problems in the Oct. 3-6 Wells Fargo/Gallup Small Business Index poll is lack of credit at 10% and poor leadership by government and the president at 9%.

Looking ahead to 2012, approximately one in three small-business owners say they are very or moderately worried about going out of business.

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The stronger-than-expected ISM manufacturing-index reading for September might normally suggest that the economy, at least for now, has dodged a recession bullet. After zero jobs and zero real consumer spending in August, which put the stalled economy on the front end of recession, the ISM number is the first major September reading.

But economist Michael Darda says hold the applause: Inside the ISM, new orders and order backlogs either flat-lined or declined and remain below 50 — the DMZ recession marker on the index.

Darda believes weak data in the U.S., plus the ongoing European crisis, plus the China slowdown, plus widened corporate credit spreads and stressful financial conditions, all point to a declining economy and additional stock market drops.

Lakshman Achuthan of the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI) is also on the bear side. He has a falling weekly leading index that signals recession is inevitable. “It’s either just begun, or it’s right in front of us,” he told CNN Money.

Tough stuff.

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While Bob Dylan wrote, “No one can sing the blues like Blind Willie McTell,” it can be said, “No president can prolong the blues like Barack Obama.”

He must be a glutton for punishment – why else would his campaign pick the House of Blues to raise money?

On September 26, Obama will make two stops in Los Angeles, first at the House of Blues, and later at a tony restaurant where donors will plop down a cool $35,800 to attend, Bloomberg reports.  Don’t you have $35,800 just lying around?  If so, the president would like to meet you.

Pictures with Obama at the House of Blues are at a cut rate – a paltry $10,000, according to ANSWER LA.

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American political fortunes have long been tied directly to the economy… so you would think that politicians would do a better job understanding how to improve the economy.  We know consumer demand is down – because consumers don’t have the money or home equity they used to have.  That alone is keeping the economy down.  Businesses, however, are said to have money but they are not spending or investing it.  Why? Because for them it’s the early 1920’s all over again.

Our so-called brilliant, Nobel Prize-winning President, for months, has exhorted American businesses to hire employees and invest – as if wishing for an economic recovery would make it so.  Recently, however, Democrat and mega-businessman Steve Wynn told the country – and Obama, if he was listening – why cash rich business is not hiring and investing.  According to Wynn, “this administration is the greatest wet blanket to business, and progress and job creation in my lifetime . . . those of us who have business opportunities and the capital to do it are going to sit in fear of the President . . .”

President Calvin Coolidge used to say, “The chief business of the American people is business.”  Even so, business doesn’t invest just for fun – they invest for profit – and they don’t invest if they think the risk of not making an acceptable profit is too high.  I wrote “acceptable” because business weighs the fact that even if they make money, it will be taxed.  As such, a business must decide not only if it will be able to make a profit, but will the profit be so much that it would be worth the trouble/risk after taking taxes into consideration.  Keep in mind business knows that it carries all of the downside risk and that government will take a good portion of any upside.  If at some point the risk gets too high, business investment and spending is stalled.

Today, Steve Wynn, and much of American business, believes that the risk of not making a decent profit is too high for several reasons.  For instance, business doesn’t see sufficient consumer demand – so they don’t stock their shelves or expand production as they otherwise might.  Regulations and the threat of more regulations are so high that they hold back money to pay for future costs.  Taxes and the threat of higher taxes are also high – and that too causes business to hold back spending in order to pay those future taxes.  As a result, business investment and spending is stalled.

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Sometimes we wonder if what has become obvious to a majority of Americans really has eluded our ruling class in Washington.  “We don’t have a precise read on why this slower pace of growth is persisting,” said Federal Reserve Chief Ben Bernanke at the Fed’s June 22 press conference.  President Obama also recently shared with us his insight regarding the sorry state of the economy with this gem:

“There are some structural issues with our economy, where a lot of businesses have learned to become much more efficient, with a lot fewer workers. You see it when you go to the bank and use an ATM — you don’t go to a bank teller. Or you go to the airport, and you’re using a kiosk, instead of checking in at the gate.

Small wonder then that the latest Bloomberg poll reveals that only about one third of Americans believe the economy is in better hands now than it was under the Bush Administration.  That is a remarkably poor assessment of the job the people feel the President and his economic team (whoever and wherever they are) is doing managing our economy.

These data are consistent with the most recent assessment of consumer confidence, which has sagged to new lows with only 17% of American households expecting conditions to improve over the next six months.  Should anyone be surprised? The Administration seems to be betting on Keynesian strategy from a 1930’s playbook.  It didn’t work then and it isn’t going to work now, and the people know it.

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From Robert Samuelson:

Confidence is crucial to stimulating consumer spending and business investment, and Obama constantly subverts confidence. In the past year, he’s undone some of the good of his first months. He loves to pick fights with Wall Street bankers, oil companies, multinational firms, health insurers and others. He thinks that he can separate policies that claim to promote recovery from those that appeal to his liberal “base,” even when the partisan policies raise business costs, stymie job creation or augment uncertainty — and, thereby, undermine recovery. His health care “reform” makes hiring more expensive to employers by mandating insurance coverage. The moratorium on deep-water oil drilling kills jobs; the administration’s estimate of employment loss is up to 12,000.

Obama’s proposal to increase taxes on personal incomes exceeding $250,000 ($200,000 for singles) is the latest example of his delusional approach. It satisfies the liberal itch to “get the rich.” Well, the rich and most other taxpayers will ultimately have to pay higher taxes to help close budget deficits. But not now.

Raising taxes in a weak economy doesn’t make sense.

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In this week’s edition of Coffee and Markets, featuring The New Ledger’s Francis Cianfrocca, we’re talking about the challenges facing Wall Street, a new survey of consumer sentiment, and Paul Krugman’s call for World War III to rescue us from economic disaster. We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment.com and Stephen Clouse and Associates.

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With no shock and awe and little pomp and circumstance, China has declared war on the world.  Having watched the Gulf Wars on CNN, Americans are accustomed to wars fought with jets, battleships, tanks and infantry.  We constantly are on the look out for foreign enemies on our soil and the vigilance of our citizens has thwarted numerous terrorist attacks.  Unfortunately, Americans are not accustomed to recognize international weapons of economic mass destruction.  In the modern world, exports, deflation and economic competiveness are weapons far more powerful than cruise missiles.

Naive to this new deadly threat, the US government has launched wave after wave of assaults on the competiveness of American business.  Healthcare and financial service “reform” is driving business operating costs higher and credit availability down.  The soon-to-expire tax cuts will result in the largest tax increase in American history.  It should not be surprising that China would use tactics akin to economic guerrilla warfare to attack when our nation is most vulnerable.

China’s supply of young workers entering the labor force is peaking this year and will decline by one third over the next dozen years due to decades of population control.  But big increases in rural farm productivity are pushing huge numbers of the young off the farms and into the factories on the coast.  With factory worker suicides rampant and labor striking over wage rates too low to buy food, China panicked last year and increased its money supply by a spectacular 40% to quell dissent.  Given the threat from a sinking economy creating a revolutionary environment at home, communist China chose to invade world markets by exporting almost 40% of its gross domestic product.

Statistics just released have obliterated any hope that a meaningful economic expansion is under way in Europe, Japan or the US.  Business confidence, factory orders, auto sales and consumer product purchases are plummeting.  Meanwhile, Chinese exports grew a blistering 22% rate for the second quarter of 2010.  With their exports equaling 5% of the world’s gross domestic product (GDP), China’s capture of another 1% of the world’s economy will force producers in other countries to cut employment by approximately 10 million jobs.

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