“I elevated the SBA [Small Business Administration] administrator to a Cabinet level position so that they are talking directly to me, so that there is no one in between me and the SBA when they are advocating on behalf of small business. …And [even after a reorganization] I’ll still have an SBA administrator in my Cabinet who’s advocating directly for small businesses.” Read full article > >

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President Obama’s small business bobble

As sprawling e-commerce companies like Amazon act more like their big-box brethren, little sites are fighting back with some tactics of their own.

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Some Shoppers Rebel Against Giant Web Retailers

It is the final day of his best year at work, and Keith Lazar, 62, settles into his corner office at the community bank. He eats a doughnut with a fork and turns on an instrumental CD titled “Relaxation.” Outside his office window, the town square is bustling with proof of his impact during the past 12 months: trucks financed by his loans, restaurants expanding because of his savings advice and small businesses created with his support. Read full article > >

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‘Life is good’ in Iowa’s Washington, but the candidates keep raising alarms

Union Hardware in Bethesda is 97 years old and has blue-collar roots. Founders Abraham and Jennie Goldberg chose the name “Union” because of the growing strength of labor unions at the time. Like many small businesses, over the years the store has lured customers away from big-box competitors with the folksy tagline, “It’s about service.” Read full article > >

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Bathrooms as art? How to save a business by going high-end

Councils and large firms offer £3m in emergency help to try to stop small businesses affected by last month’s riots from going under.

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Companies launch riot help fund

Our country is facing two related but separate crises. The first is the federal government’s debt crisis, the result of decades of fiscal mismanagement by both political parties as well as unsustainable entitlement commitments. The second is the jobs crisis, which has resulted in painful levels of unemployment and underemployment. President Obama is wrong to think that the answer is to increase spending or raise taxes when so many millions of Americans are out of work. In fact, the Obama administration’s anti-business , hyper-regulatory, pro-tax agenda has fueled economic uncertainty and sent the message from the administration that “we want to make it harder to create jobs.” There is no other conclusion for policies such as the new Environmental Protection Agency regulations, including the “ Transport Rule ,” which could eliminate thousands of jobs, or the ozone regulation that would cost upward of $1 trillion and millions of jobs in the construction industry over the next decade. The administration’s new maximum achievable control technology standards for cement are expected to affect nearly 100 cement plants, setting over-the-top requirements resulting in increased costs and possibly thousands of jobs being offshored. There is the president’s silence as the National Labor Relations Board seeks to prevent Boeing from opening a plant in South Carolina that would create thousands of jobs. Such behavior, coupled with the president’s insistence on raising the top tax rate paid by individuals and small businesses, has resulted in a lag in growth that has added to the debt crisis, contributing to our nation’s credit downgrade. Read full article > >

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Removing the obstacles to economic growth

Small business owners on picking up the pieces after the riots

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‘Like a warzone’

What would you do to improve your shot at the MBA program of your dreams? Start a small business? Or a nonprofit, perhaps? Travel the world to bulk up your personal narrative? Maybe even drop $10,000 on a prep course? If you’re aiming for the Stanford Graduate School of Business, you may well be tempted to do all of the above. “From the classmate who climbed Mount Everest to the one who started a microfinance organization for individual entrepreneurs, these are the people who are your classmates and will ultimately become your friends — for life,” says a prerecorded message from Stefan, a Stanford MBA student from Belgium who keeps you company while you’re on hold with the admissions office. Read full article > >

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Would you climb any mountain to get into MBA program of your dreams?

A trade group’s report says more small companies plan to shrink their work forces than expand them in the coming months.

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A Slowdown for Small Businesses

SACRAMENTO In 1967, five years after California became the most populous state, novelist Wallace Stegner said that California — energetic, innovative, hedonistic — was America, “only more so.” Today, this state’s budget crisis is like the nation’s, only more so. Bob Dutton is an island of calm in the eye of the storm — which should agitate Gov. Jerry Brown. Dutton came to California from Nebraska at age 19 in 1969 and now is the leader of Republicans in the state Senate. He contentedly says that his caucus is “almost like a Chamber of Commerce board of directors.” Its members are mostly from small businesses, as he is. Because they are term-limited, they cannot make a career here, so they might as well follow their small — well, smaller — government inclinations. Read full article > >

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Golden State blues

Leo Kahn, 94, a warehouse supermarket pioneer who turned his all-under-one-roof approach to pencils and paperclips as the co-founder of office-supply giant Staples, died May 11 at an assisted living facilty in Boston. He had complications from a series of strokes. The son of a wholesale grocer, Mr. Kahn transformed his family’s small business into Purity Supreme, one of the largest supermarket chains in New England. One of Mr. Kahn’s innovations was Heartland Food Warehouse, a big-box style grocery that Inc. ine called “the first successful deep-discount supermarket in the country.” Read full article > >

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Leo Kahn, entrepreneur who helped found Staples office-supply business, dies at 94

Three members of President Barack Obama’s administration and the heads of two federal agencies that deal with disasters and small business development are scheduled on Sunday to tour parts of Alabama and Mississippi decimated last week by one of the deadliest tornado outbreaks in American history.

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Feds promise aid in ‘tough recovery’

Plus, does the way people dress affect your decision to buy, sell or hire?

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You’re the Boss: This Week in Small Business: The Shutdown and the Showdown

But it’s never to early to start thinking about it.

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You’re the Boss: Timing a Business Sale

MEPs have held their annual debate on the work of the EIB, looking at the way in which it invests in small businesses across the EU.

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VIDEO: European Investment Bank under scrutiny