Refocusing on Main Street: MerchantCircle in The New York Times

For politicians and the media, talking up Main Street is a much tougher pitch than talking up Wall Street. On Wall Street, you can see the valuations of companies rise and fall by millions in a day. On Main Street, it's much harder to gauge a new business opening or a store closing in, say, Pocatello, Idaho. As the economy dramatically began to shift downwards during the Presidential Election, the politicians finally began throwing around "Main Street" in their campaign speeches. It's a good thing too, since Main Street creates two-thirds of all new American jobs.

Well, the media started to come around as well, once Joe the Plumber became Mr. Main Street. Today, one of MerchantCircle's small business surveys on the financial crisis was featured in The New York Times:

"In a survey in September of 4,200 small-business owners by MerchantCircle, a social networking Web site for small companies, four of five respondents said either that the federal bailout of financial institutions would not help them or that they were unsure whether it would.

At the same time, the election intensified scrutiny of Mr. Obama's tax plans. He has pledged to raise taxes on households earning more than $250,000. He has also pledged to create a $5 billion Small Business Rescue Plan, similar to the Treasury bailout, to be run through the Small Business Administration, as well as to scrap capital gains taxes on investments in small businesses and provide them with a small tax credit on their health care costs."

Click here to read the full article. Click here to see the survey results mentioned in the article.

Sincerely,
Kevin
Community Relations