Do You Believe In Confidence Fairies?



You see, while traveling I reread Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August , and there it was: Plan XVII:



Entirely offensive in nature, Plan XVII made extensive use of the belief in the mystical élan vital assumed to be instilled within every Frenchman – a fighting spirit capable of turning back any enemy by its sheer power.



Unfortunately, fighting spirit proved not very useful when charging machine guns. And I’m afraid that relying on confidence to deal with the downdraft from a financial crisis will work out no better.

Guns of August

In every recession over the last three decades, it has been America's small businesses — those Lilliputian companies with fewer than 100 employees — that stepped forward, began hiring and pulled the country out of the mire.



Not this time....A host of factors — some well-recognized and others seemingly unnoticed in the national debate over economic policy — are converging to restrain small-business owners from hiring. Among them:



* Near-stagnant demand for goods and services as a result of consumers' reluctance to return to their free-spending ways.

* A disturbing falloff in the creation of new small businesses.

* The devastation of the real estate market.

* Uncertainty about the economic outlook at home and abroad.



....The fact that many small firms are seeing little increase in demand for their services and products is decisive for Scott George, owner of Mid-America Dental & Hearing Center, which employs 55 people in the southwestern Missouri town of Mount Vernon.



"I'm not having any trouble getting money," said George, who recently got a $250,000 loan to renovate one of his buildings. But he's not hiring more workers because of little or no growth in sales.

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