Small Businesses are Not Hiring – Why Should They?
by ilene - August 20th, 2010 1:35 pm
Small Businesses are Not Hiring – Why Should They?
Courtesy of Mish
In response to Creating Jobs Carries a Punishing Price, an article about Mr. Fleischer, president of Bogen Communications Inc. and why he is not hiring, I received an interesting email from "David" a reader who disagrees with Mr. Fleischer’s stated reasons for not hiring.
One of the items mentioned by Mr. Fleischer and challenged by "David" is the idea that corporations are sitting on cash. On this score, "David" is correct. I have also debunked the idea that corporations are sitting in cash (Please see Are Corporations Sitting on Piles of Cash?)
"David" also challenged Mr. Fleischer’s math on healthcare.
However, such arguments miss the entire point of the post.
Actions Matter!
It does not matter one iota if Mr. Fleischer is wrong about corporate sideline cash or anything else. What matters is Mr. Fleischer thinks he has sufficient reasons not to hire.
On that score, I believe Mr. Fleischer is correct. There are numerous good reasons to not hire.
Businesses have a legitimate worry about health care costs, rising taxes, and other artifacts of Obama’s legislation.
On the consumer side, this is not a typical recession. This is a credit bust recession with consumers still deleveraging. With savings deposits yielding close to 0% and with credit card rates over 20%, common sense dictates consumers pay down bills rather than make new purchases. The housing bubble has burst and boomers are headed into retirement with insufficient savings.
Given all the economic uncertainties, consumers are reacting in a rational manner by not spending. In turn, businesses have consistently cited lack of customers as one reason to not hire.
Pertinent Facts
That Mr. Fleischer fails to articulate reasons that others agree with is irrelevant. The pertinent fact is he is not hiring.
More importantly, numerous other small business owners think and act just like Mr. Fleischer. How do we know? Simple …
- August 03, 2010: Wells Fargo/Gallup Small Business Index Hits Record Low, Future Expectations Dip Below Zero First Time Ever
- August 10, 2010: Small Business Trends – Yet Another Disaster
- August 19, 2010: Weekly Unemployment Claims Hit 500,000, Exceed Every Economist’s Estimate; No Lasting Improvement for 9 Months
What Can Be Done?
For my thoughts on what to do about small business hiring, please…
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Get An Emotional Margin of Safety
by ilene - August 25th, 2009 9:40 pm
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Get An Emotional Margin of Safety
Courtesy of Tim of The Psy-Fi Blog
Businesslike Investment
Warren Buffett states, quite frequently, that the most important investment statement ever made was that of his mentor, the father of value investing, Ben Graham:
"Investment is at its most intelligent when it is most businesslike"
Now if you’ve ever wondered exactly what that means you’re not alone. But it’s really one of the most important business lessons any of us can ever learn. It encapsulates the idea that investment isn’t about individual subjective feelings but about general objective rationale. To be good investors we need to learn to control our emotions. Unfortunately it’s got a bit more difficult since Graham first wrote those words.
Unemotional Investment
We find Graham’s statement difficult to understand because we don’t understand Graham’s – or Buffett’s – viewpoint. Although both men are amongst the best communicators the world of top-class investment has ever thrown up they still sit in the rarefied atmosphere of that elite group of investors who are able to step away from their own emotions when they come to investing.
By “businesslike” Graham meant “unemotional”. At the root of all good investment, he believed, was a focus on the underlying numbers. Graham, far more so than Buffett, was focused on the investment ratios and balance sheets of his investments. To be “businesslike” the individual investor needs to ruthlessly focused on the numbers, not the stories associated with them. Thus Graham and Buffett aim to remove the behavioural biases that affect most investors.
Of course, there’s no doubt that there are a select group of people who are more easily able to ignore the impact of group psychology than the rest of us. It’s possible – even probable – that the great investors of the world are simply psychologically unusual people who are capable of ignoring the impact of normal behavioural biases. These people are so rare that it would be interesting to take one of them and wire up their brain to a computer to see whether their responses are different from that of normal humans. Only trouble is they’re so rich that they can employ really big bodyguards and generally reckon their brains are their own concern.
Emotionless Delusions
Antonio Damasio has conducted lots of research…
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW. She manages the site