Watching the government bail out industry giants on Wall Street with
billions of dollars in aid may seem disheartening for small business
owners. But on March 19, 2009, in an effort to support Main Street as
well, President Barack Obama and US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner
announced a new initiative to help small businesses stay afloat.

In a meeting with small business owners, Obama called small
businesses “the heart of the American economy” and introduced a plan
that would pump $15 billion of lending money to banks and businesses.
“[Small businesses] are responsible for half of all private sector
jobs—and they created roughly 70% of all new jobs in the past decade,”
the President said.

As early as the end of this month, the Treasury Department will start
making “direct purchases of securities backed by loans guaranteed by
the Small Business Administration,” (New York Times,
March 16, 2009). This is in hopes of jump-starting the secondary
market, where lenders can sell parts of a loan to build capital for
additional loans, a process which the economic crisis has impacted
severely.

Here are the main provisions of this latest governmental aid program aimed at supporting small business:

• The Treasury Department would purchase some of the small business
  loans that currently lock down regional banks and lenders. Banks will
  be able to sell securities to the Treasury Department and the loans
  would be backed by the Small Business Administration.
• According to the Chicago Tribune, the funding for these
  securities is to come from the $240 billion dollars approved by
  Congress as part of the Troubled Asset Purchase Program (Chicago Tribune, March 16, 2009).
• With some of the credit unlocked, regional banks and lenders will be able to start extending new loans to small businesses.
• The 21 largest banks in the US that receive the governmental
  aid will have to report the amount of money they lend to small
  businesses.
• As part of the program to help businesses, the IRS will
  allow small business owners to claim losses not just from 2008, but
  from the past 5 years on their 2008 tax returns. This would mean a
  rebate on taxes paid in previous years.
• Additionally, small businesses will be able to write off up
  to $250,000 worth of “qualified investment” this year, such as
  purchases of new equipment, (White House briefing, March 16, 2009).

US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner cautioned lenders.
“Banks need to make the extra effort to make sure that good loans are
getting to creditworthy small businesses in order to serve the larger
public good of moving this nation to recovery,” (Chicago Tribune, March 16, 2009).

Written by B. Kaiser

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When you operate a home based business it is very important to consider all relevant trends. Take a look at the following list of trends and see how many have affected your business. Will they affect your future?

20. Yellow Pages

2009 will be pivotal for the global Yellow Pages industry. Much like newspapers, print Yellow Pages will continue to bleed advertising dollars to their various digital counterparts, from Internet Yellow Pages (IYPs), to local search engines, directories and combination search/listing services like LocalAdLink, Reach Local and Yodle. Factors like an acceleration of the print “fade rate” and the looming recession will contribute to the downfall of Yellow Page advertising. One research firm predicts the falloff in usage of newspapers and print Yellow Pages could even reach 10% this year which is much higher than the 2%-3% fade rate seen in past years.

19. Classified Ads

The growth of the Internet and all the new technology has made so many things obsolete that newspaper classified ads might sound like just another trivial item on a long list. The predictions are that if newspaper classifieds are replaced by free online listings at sites like Craigslist.org, Salespider.com, Web-ads.com and Google Base, then newspapers are not far behind them.

18. Phone Landlines

According to a survey by the National Center for Health Statistics, at the end of 2007, nearly one in six homes had cellular phones only. Of those homes that had landlines, one in eight only received calls on their cell phones.

17. Movie Rental Stores

While Netflix’s sales keep increasing, Blockbuster keeps closing store locations by the hundreds. It still has about 6,000 left across the world, but the numbers keep dwindling. Their stock was down considerably in 2008, especially since the company gave up on Circuit City . Movie Gallery, which also owned the Hollywood Video brand, closed up shop last this year. Countless small video chains and mom-and-pop stores have given up and closed their doors.

16. Chesapeake Bay Blue Crabs
Maryland ’s icon, the blue crab, has been gradually disappearing in Chesapeake Bay . In 2007 Maryland saw the lowest harvest (22 million pounds) since 1945. Just four decades ago the bay produced 96 million pounds a year. The crab population is estimated to be down 70% since 1990, when the first formal count was completed. There are only about 120 million crabs in the bay and it’s estimated that 200 million is needed for a sustainable population. Over catching, pollution, invasive hostile species and global warming are blamed.

15. VCRs

For the better part of three decades, the VCR was a best-seller and a staple in nearly every American household until it has now been almost completely replaced by the DVD and the Digital Video Recorder (DVR). In fact, the only reminders of the VHS age are the blank tapes at the local Walmart or Radio Shack and the recorded tapes stored away in your closet. Pre-recorded VHS tapes are largely gone and VHS recorders and players are practically nowhere to be found.

14. Honey Bees

Perhaps nothing on our list of the disappearing America is so dreadful as the vanishing honey bee. It is so necessary to the survival of our food supply, yet it plummeted so enormously. It’s quite scary. ‘Colony Collapse Disorder,’ or CCD, has spread throughout the U.S and Europe over the past few years, wiping out 50% to 90% of the colonies of many beekeepers and along with it, their livelihood.

13. Ham Radio

Amateur radio operators enjoy personal (and often worldwide) wireless communications with each other and are able to support their communities with emergency and disaster communications if necessary, while increasing their personal knowledge of electronics and radio theory. However, proliferation of the Internet and its popularity among young people has caused the decline of amateur radio. In the past five years alone, the number of people holding active ham radio licenses has dropped by 50,000, even though the Morse Code is no longer a requirement.

12. News Magazines and TV News

While the TV evening newscasts haven’t started to disappear over the last several decades, their audiences have. In 1984, in a story about the diminishing returns of the evening news, the New York Times reported that all three network evening news programs combined had only 40.9 million viewers. Now, 24 years later they have only half that.

11. Incandescent Bulbs

A few years ago, the standard 60-watt bulb was the mainstay of every U.S. home. With the green movement and all-things-sustainable-energy crowd, the Compact Fluorescent Light bulb (CFL) is largely replacing the older, Edison-era incandescent bulb. The EPA reported that 2007 sales for Energy Star CFLs nearly doubled from 2006, and these sales accounted for approximately 20% of the U.S. light bulb market. According to USA Today, a new energy bill plans to phase out incandescent bulbs in the next 4 to 12 years.

10. Answering Machines

The increasing disappearance of answering machines is directly tied to #18 our list, the decline of landlines. According to USA Today, the number of homes that only use cell phones jumped
159% between 2004 and 2007. It has been particularly bad in New York; since 2000 landline usage has dropped 55%. It’s logical that as cell phones rise, many of them replacing traditional landlines, that there will be fewer answering machines.

9. Hand-Written Letters

In 2006, the Radicati Group estimated that, worldwide, 183 billion e-mails were sent each day. That’s two million each second. By November of 2007, an estimated 3.3 billion people worldwide owned cell phones, and 80% of the world’s population had access to cell phone coverage. In 2004, half-a-trillion text messages were sent, and the number has had a tremendous increase since then.

8. Wild Horses

It is estimated that 100 years ago, as many as two million horses were roaming free within the United States. In 2001, National Geographic News estimated that the wild horse population had decreased to about 50,000 heads. Last year, the National Wild Horse and Burro Advisory board stated that there were 32,000 free roaming horses in ten Western states, with half of them
residing in Nevada. The Bureau of Land Management is said to be seeking to reduce the total number of free range horses to 27,000, possibly by selective mercy killing.

7. Personal Checks

According to an American Bankers Association report, 23% of consumers plan to decrease their use of checks over the next two years, while 14% plan to increase their use of debit cards. Bill payment remains the last stronghold of paper-based payments, at least for the time being. Checks continue to be the most commonly used bill payment method, with 71% of consumers paying at least one recurring bill per month by writing a check. However, on a bill-by-bill basis, checks account for only 49% of consumers’ recurring bill payments, down from 72% in 2001.

6. Dial-up Internet Access

Dial-up connections have fallen from 40% in 2001 to 10% in 2008. The combination of the improving infrastructure to accommodate affordable high speed Internet connections and the disappearing home phone have all but pounded the final nail in the coffin of dial-up Internet access.

5. Mumps and Measles

In spite of what’s been in the news lately, the measles and mumps actually, truly are disappearing from the United States. In 1964, 212,000 cases of mumps were reported in the U.S. By 1983, this figure had dropped to 3,000, thanks to prioritizing the vaccination program. Prior to the introduction of the measles vaccine, about half a million cases of measles were reported in the U.S. annually, resulting in 450 deaths. In 2005, only 66 cases were recorded.

4. Cameras Using Film

It doesn’t require a statistician to prove the rapid disappearance of the film camera in America. Just look to companies like Nikon, the professional’s choice for quality camera equipment. In 2006, it announced that it would stop making film cameras, pointing to the shrinking market. In 2005 it amounted to only 3% of its sales, compared to 75% of its sales from digital cameras and equipment.

3. Drive-in Theaters

During the peak in 1958, there were more than 4,000 drive-in theaters in the USA, but in 2007 only 405 drive-ins were still operating. No new drive-ins have been built since 2005. Only one reopened in 2005 and five reopened in 2006.

2. Analog TV

According to the Consumer Electronics Association, 85% of homes in the U.S. get their television programming through cable or satellite providers. For the remaining 15%, or 13 million individuals, who are using rabbit ears or a large outdoor antenna to get their local stations, change is in the air. If you are one of these people, you’ll need to get a new TV or a converter box now in order to get the new stations which will only be broadcast in digital.

1. The Family Farm

Since the 1930s, the number of family farms all over the country has been declining rapidly. According to the US Department of Agriculture, there were 5.3 million farms in 1950, but this number had declined to 2.1 million by the 2003 farm census (data from the 2007 census hasn’t yet been published). Ninety-one percent of the U.S. farms are small family farms. Soon only large commercial farms will be productive.