Redefining and Rebuilding Main Street Pt. 1

As many of us were, I was amazed and in awe on October 3rd when the “bailout bill” was signed into law. We were faced with many decisions that came down to the kitchen table that night and the weeks to follow. What just happened and what is going to happen now? The lack of transparency from our elected officials was amazing. Just to recap, we were told that the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (EESA) was a mandatory action to save Wall Street and our financial system from collapse. In its original form it was declined by a massive margin in the House of Representatives. It was revamped with many middle class friendly tax breaks and the bill passed in the Senate with the general public in bittersweet response. Then in a stunning move, the bill was amended by the House of Representatives with loads of opportunist friendly tax cuts including breaks for rum producers and film makers. Within hours of being passed it was handed over to the White House and signed into law by the president.

The main question now is how this bill affects the community or Main Street as we are called. It’s all about the small business owner who is also the homeowner and the consumer. As a micro business enterprise and a community leader in Metro Atlanta, I have the opportunity to see how both business and community is being affected. With a year of record losses, in excess of 800,000 jobs, more than 770,000 foreclosures it’s not hard to see the similarities that exist. For almost every job that was lost, there was a home foreclosed upon. For low and middle income areas across the country, these numbers have been devastating. So that we are all clear, more than 90% of small business owners are found in the middle class. Metro Atlanta alone is ripe with over 90,000 small businesses and these business owners hire from within their communities. As small business owners lose their homes and their savings, they are forced to close their doors which have lead to layoffs and the destabilization of the community. It’s an ugly spiral that is occurring all over the U.S. But how much did low income and middle class America truly benefit from Wall Street? Most of us could not afford the services that Wall Street offered particularly the minimum investment requirements of the recently fallen financial giants. We either didn’t make enough money or we didn’t have the same amount of financial knowledge for Wall Street to work for us. In the midst of our elected officials passing this $700,000,000,000.00 bailout burden on to us the taxpayer, we have to work to make sure that Main Street is revitalized and empowered from within.

Main Street has to focus on rebuilding and redefining Main Street. We do this by utilizing the smaller and more stable financial assets of the community. We’ve gotten away from the community banks and credit unions. We’ve forsaken relationship building for national and global convenience. It’s evident, now more than ever those communities and the small business owners that serve them cannot rely on the larger financial institutions to fulfill our financial needs. As much as they try to evoke the spirit of building a relationship, they are still bound to rules and regulations that do not have Main Street in mind. Your neighborhood banks have the capability to work with you on matters of credit and income. Local credit unions are owned by the members and ultimately they don’t post billion dollar losses. Your neighbors are your bankers, doctors, dentists, attorneys, plumbers, electricians, barbers, beauticians, pastors, police officers and firemen. Basic instinct and self preservation would prompt many of us to abandon the businesses and financial institutions that built the community in the first place. But in this age of uncertainty and financial discomfort, it’s best to reconnect with the community and build it up from within. Growing up on Long Island it was amazing for me to travel into the boroughs of Queens and Brooklyn. In announcing that I’m from Long Island, I was treated like I wasn’t even from NY!! It’s not like there is anything more that intersections and backyards separating those two boroughs from Long Island, they were actually on long Island. But there was such solidarity among residents in Hollis, Bedford Stuyvesant, Fort Greene, Maspeth and Kew Gardens. The communities were and still are for the most part self sustained, with local craftsmen and blue collar workers supplying the needs of the local white collar businesses. The non-chain traditional banks are supported by all generations, service providers are family owned for two and three generations. Teachers and elected officials are products of the local school system that know exactly what is needed to keep the neighborhood moving forward financially. There are very few residents that are “imports”. There is an awesome sense of pride and that is what communities across the country need to run back to.

So what’s the next step? Let’s focus on reinvesting in our communities, our neighborhood financial institutions and small businesses. Let’s work together to keep Main Street thriving regardless of what happens on Wall Street. Let’s move forward in educating all age groups in the areas of fiscal responsibility, mortgage lending, proper banking practices, budgeting, credit management and credit itself. If we all knew how the financial system of our country works, we can work together to make sure that it stays working in the best interest of all American’s, not just the 5% who make up the privileged few. Let’s redefine and rebuild Main Street together.

www.thejosephconsortium.com