James E. Mitchell, Jr., Charlotte City Council member and Past President of the National League of Cities, and Donald J. Borut, Executive Director, of the National League of Cities, are attending April 5th’s signing of the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act.

NLC issued the following statement thanking President Obama, Majority Leader Eric Cantor and members of both political parties for their efforts to pass this Act:

While the economy is showing signs of improvement, it is still at a critical juncture. The JOBS Act creates a much needed source of capital for small businesses and entrepreneurs in communities across the country who have been stymied in their ability to participate in the economic recovery.

This is especially true for smaller, innovative companies that reside outside the traditional geographic regions for venture capital.  The JOBS Act will allow more communities to take part in the recovery by encouraging local companies to gain access to capital in order to grow businesses and expand employment.

Small businesses are the heart of Main Street.  In addition to employing local residents, they create a sense of place and support a city in developing its own talent and resources. This Act will help small and new entrepreneurs who want to take the chance to start their own business and create their own future.  It is this spirit of innovation that will drive a full national recovery in all of our communities.

Local governments regularly work across party lines, and this Act is a great example of what can happen when partisan rancor is set aside in an effort to rebuild our hometown economies. We hope it serves as an example for future bipartisan policy making, such as with the Marketplace Fairness Act, to help economic recovery in cities and towns across the nation.

The National League of Cities is dedicated to helping city leaders build better communities. NLC is a resource and advocate for 19,000 cities, towns and villages, representing more than 218 million Americans.

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What can we learn from Apple, Groupon, and Facebook? That it pays more than a billion dollars to be the first team off the starting block. They have been rewarded with billion dollar IPOs by successfully predicting market behavior. Three years ago, WealthForge began developing their own prediction model focused on the idea that “crowdfund investing” would be legalized in the U.S. and only moments ago, their prediction came true.

President Obama just signed the JOBS act into law, signifying new legislation that will lift several SEC restrictions on soliciting investors, while permitting “crowdfunding” the ability for entrepreneurs to raise equity capital from larger groups of small investors.

Investments must be made through an SEC registered “funding portal” or website and investors may be limited in their total crowdfunding investments based on their net worth. (For detailed JOBS act information) click here.

Mat Dellorso and Fred Bryant co-founders of WealthForge are glad to see this day come, but neither are surprised about the overwhelming approval of the JOBS act. The two former University of Richmondstudents founded WealthForge in 2009 with the idea that smaller businesses should have greater chances of raising capital.

“Being a startup ourselves, we experienced the challenges of fundraising,” says Dellorso. “Our goal was to create a more efficient and simplified marketplace where entrepreneurs and investors could locate funding opportunities and complete the fundraising transactions in one place.”

It took almost 3 years for WealthForge to prove the model and register with the SEC. However, it appears their due diligence has paid off. While the JOBS act awaits the SEC’s 270 day review period, WealthForge stands ready to handle “crowdfund investing” NOW.

At WealthForge, entrepreneurs create a business profile and outline their funding objectives in a secure environment. Once the business is ready to fundraise they can use the platform to expose their business and funding objectives with a community of potential investors. This isn’t your typical Kickstarter project where entrepreneurs seek donations, rather where entrepreneurs raise equity capital for their business.

“WealthForge vets company profiles for strong investment opportunities,” Dellorso remarks, “we also vet investors to ensure they are a good fit for the company who is seeking capital and guidance.”

A new marketplace for small business fundraising has emerged and WealthForge is armed and ready. Create your profile at http://wealthforgeonline.com.

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An Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) analysis of the March employment report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, job growth improved in February with 227,000 jobs added to nonfarm payrolls. In February women gained 86,000 jobs (almost 40 percent, above their share for the past year) and men gained 141,000. The gap between women’s and men’s employment in February is 1.9 million. IWPR released a new Quick Figures with two new graphics.

The unemployment rates remained largely steady from January to February declining for women aged 16 and older (to 8.2 percent from 8.3 percent) and unchanged for men (8.3 percent). Women’s employment growth was aided by strong growth in health care (49,000 jobs added overall) and food service and drinking places (40,800 jobs added overall).

In the last year, from February 2011 to February 2012, of the 2.1 million jobs added to payrolls, 672,000 or 31% were filled by women and 1,462,000 or 69 percent were filled by men. Since October of 2009 when men’s and women’s total jobs numbers were virtually equal, women have gained 648,000 jobs, whereas men have gained 2,544,000.

Since June 2009 when the recession officially ended, men have gained 88 percent (1.9 million) while women have gained only 273,000 (12 percent) of the jobs added to payrolls – primarily because jobs growth for women lagged men’s by nearly a year.

Women have regained nearly one out of three (855,000 or 31.4 percent) of the total jobs they lost in the recession (2.7 million from December 2007 to the trough for women’s employment in September 2010, which occurred more than one year after the recession officially ended). The picture looks somewhat better for men: men have gained 43.4 percent (2.6 million) of the jobs they lost since December 2007 (6.0 million).

In the first quarter of 2009, when President Obama began his term, employment was still falling steeply. With the passage of the President’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in February 2009, job losses abated and turned to job growth in early 2010. In 2011 and 2012 the gains in jobs added are being shared by women and men.

There is still a jobs deficit relative to before the recession, which was the most severe since the 1930s. At the pace of job gains in February (227,000), it would take until late 2016 just to employ those currently looking for work without considering additional workers entering the labor force. As of February 12.8 million workers remain unemployed.

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President Obama unveiled his eagerly awaited jobs plan recently, which might bring fresh hope and confidence to the economy and to the lives of people in America. The plan is mix of deliberate adjustment of expenditure and taxation, with a purpose to assist the ailing U.S. out of the recovery bed.

The President revealed what many have seen as a second stimulus package to lift the economy from recession. He proposed mild ramifications with fiscal tools, deductions in payroll taxes and extending the spendings on infrastructure and other alternatives to get the economy running again.

In order to increase activity, a mix of tax cuts and spendings on schools and roads, aid to teachers and assistance to the unemployed was announced. The total cost of the plan is $447 billion of which $253 billion will go to tax-cuts and $194 to new spendings. A select part of the bill could become law and provide a measure of support for the economy.

The best component to win the congress’ approval is the payroll tax cuts. Reduction in tax rates will give more purchasing power to the consumer, which eventually should push demands upwards. Currently employees normally pay 6 percent if their income in tax, but in the future, they may become liable to pay only 4.2 percent. A reduction of 2 percent.

Fundamentally, the Obama administration wants to put more people to work and increase spending so that a weakened demand may get strengthened and help bring back certainty in economic activity.

The $447 billion cost program is nearly half of the stimulus package announced by the President in 2009, and reflects the severity of the economic crisis. When the economy is weak, governments will often launch ambitious analysis to find out the root cause of the problem, and upon successfully finding it, they design policy to curb or mitigate its impact on the economy.

As in this case, Obama proposed a National Infrastructure bank which would cost $10 billion to establish, but which would pay for new public construction projects like local roads, bridges and mass transit systems.

Furthermore, the president outlined new spending program for school modernization (at least 35,000 public schools) with total spending of $25 billion. In an effort to provide benefits to jobless people, the plan sets aside $62 billion for unemployment insurance to continue supporting the jobless.

Many economists say that the American government must put billions of dollars into the economy to keep it from sinking into recession, but no proposal is ever be without criticism. Nigel Gault, Chief Economist with HIS Global Insight said “If you give somebody a tax cut and they just save it, then there no jobs created”.
Christopher Halloran / Shutterstock.com

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With a country in despair and a re-election around the corner, President Obama proposed the American Jobs act on Thursday 13th to a joint session in congress. The President’s reason for this speech seemed far from wanting to get re-elected, but instead focused on the millions of Americans that currently need jobs.

He stated that the proposed bill was “simple” and elaborated by emphasizing that its main goal was simply to get people working again. The main goal of this $477 billion dollar jobs plan is focused around small businesses that are struggling, moving away from big businesses that were able to bounce back successfully in the recession.

The bill will ultimately provide, “a tax break for companies that hire new workers, and it will cut payrolls in half for every working American and every small business.” The President also included his recent agreement, which was put in place to cut government spending by $1 trillion within the next 10 years, as well as reduce spending in congress.

Present Obama almost seemed desperate for some kind of agreement in congress to get this bill passes as soon as possible. Along with repeatedly saying “pass this bill now,” He added, “there should be nothing controversial about this piece of legislation.”

He continued on to say, “Everything in here is the kind of proposal that’s been supported by both Democrats and Republicans — including many who sit here tonight. And everything in this bill will be paid for. Everything.” He even discussed how Republicans have proposed the same payroll tax cut as seen in his American Jobs Act, to hopefully appeal to republicans in congress.

Mr. Obama hoped that it would be helpful to add examples of why congress should agree and pass this bill. He made references to previous bills that were similar and which both democrats and republicans agreed on. He also tried to tie the two parties together when he said that the bill came from ideas from both a Texas Republican as well as a Massachusetts Democrat.

Republicans responded that the essential proposal was nothing new and simply a scheme for re-election. Many didn’t even attend the President’s speech in attempts to “boycott” it. Senate minority Leader, Mitch McConnell, a republican from Kentucky said, “This isn’t a jobs plan. It is a re-election plan.”

On the other hand, Republican Speaker John Boehner showed an open mind and focused on the creation of jobs rather than the speech itself. He said, “I’m hopeful that after the president gives his speech that we’ll be able to sit down, in a bipartisan way, and fine common ground that will help improve our economy, and improve the job picture for the American people.”

The President is out to end the “political circus’ in congress, and unfortunately, American workers will see no change unless the President and congress find common ground.

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