Cash for Clunker Businesses

Like cars, many small businesses out there are clunkers—cash guzzling, severely damaged by the recession. Now, the government is looking to bail out these business owners, as it did for car owners. If you have a venture that’s a bit of a stinker, you might benefit from the America’s Recovery Capital program, or ARC, which offers up to $35,000 to save your business.

Just like Cash for Clunkers, which ended this week, ARC a deadline. But don’t sweat it too much. ARC is set to end either September 2010 or when its $235 million budget runs out, “whichever comes first,“ according to the Small Business Administration. But only about 1,000 ARC loans have been approved since mid June, new lending data released this month shows. That’s well below the 10,000 loans the SBA says its budget can support.

To reach that target, the agency will have to get far more lenders on board. Of more than 8,000 FDIC-backed banks out there, only 400 have made loans to small businesses under ARC—mostly in the nation‘s heartland. Just three of the agency’s top 10 small-business lenders, Wells Fargo, PNC Financial and Zions Bank, are administering the $35,000 interest-free loans to “viable” small businesses struggling with debts as a result of the downturn. (By “viable,” the SBA means businesses that were in good shape before the crash.)…

Time to Buy – Your Way into a Job

If you’re looking for an employer or want to expand your business, now’s a good time to make a move.

Thanks to the recession, there’s never been a better time to buy a small business—provided you’ve got the financial wherewithal. There has been a surge in the number of small businesses going up for sale in the past few months, but only half as many have found buyers compared to the same period last year, according to BizBuySell.com, an online small-business marketplace. That means it’s a buyers’ market, conventional valuations are out the window and there are bargain-basement prices for investors willing to take a risk in a down market.

Among the small businesses that have sold this year, the median sales price has dropped by about 20 percent to $160,000 from $200,000 last year, the site reports.

Typically, brokers and market watchers gauge the value of these deals by dividing the asking price for a business by its annual revenue or cash flow. In the past few months, these figures, known as revenue or cash flow multiples, have dropped dramatically in closing prices, by between 2.5 and 8 percent. Until recently, both multiples were rising steadily…

Bailouts Are for Bullies

Asked why the federal government refuses to bailout CIT, a major small-business lender on the brink of bankruptcy, a Treasury Department flack told MSNBC last week that “even during periods of financial stress, we believe that there is a very high threshold for exceptional government assistance to individual companies.”

That didn’t prevent perennial overachievers like Bank of America, American Express, AIG, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, GM, Bank of New York Mellon, U.S. Bancorp, Northern Trust — wait, there’s still more — State Street, BB&T, and Capital One Financial from collectively receiving hundreds of billions in taxpayer dollars last fall.

What gives? The Obama Administration keeps touting small business as the engine of private-sector job growth so crucial to the nation’s economic recovery. CIT — which received $2.3 billion in TARP funds in December — has a million clients with some $6 billion in credit lines, all for small and midsize businesses that are now tapping these funds for every penny. Maybe that’s peanuts compared to the $600 billion fall of the Lehman Brothers, which federal officials now openly regret not saving from bankruptcy — economists estimate the collapse cost the nation as many as two million jobs. That’s a lot of jobs, but nothing compared to the 120 million Americans who …

Sotomayor Had It Easy

A severe company-wide crisis is underway and, as a mid-level manager, you have to decide: Push forward with a risky new plan that could save jobs and bring in more revenue — if it works — or scrap your costly team now and stay the course. But wait. Now you’re a lower-level worker facing the same situation from a different perspective. How do your elegancies shift? Would you remain loyal to the company? Or stand by your fellow co-workers as part of a team?

Such role-playing games are the type of exercises Hallie Crawford, a certified career coach in Atlanta, Ga., says some of her clients are being run through in job interviews. “It’s kind of a no-win situation,” Crawford says of the above scenario, which a recent client faced. Side with upper management and you’re a yes man; side with co-workers and you‘re disloyal.

Think this week’s vetting process for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor was tough? Try sitting through just about any mid-level job interview these days …

You’ve Got the Job! See You in Six Months

Is there such a thing as job security without a job? In this recession, anything’s possible.

To balance a strict hiring freeze with the need to secure talent, more and more employers are signing up new hires with delayed start dates, some as long as six to eight months away.

In a new CareerBuilder survey, one in ten of more than 2,500 hiring managers, HR managers and other recruiters said they’ve recently offered positions with postponed start dates. The move allows them to develop staff for the future, while keeping the current headcount down as the recession lingers.

Less than half of these recruiters said they provided a pay incentive to new hires who were willing to wait out the downturn, the survey found.

The new strategy comes as employers face the allure of a buyers’ market for talent at a time when few have the resources to take them on…

The New Debt Collectors

While many of us would sooner forget the past year or so, a few history buffs out there have started hunting for recession souvenirs. A top prize among this group are the IOUs issued by California’s cash-strapped Gubernator Arnold Schwarzenegger last week.

Like Depression-era stock certificates, which were worthless in their day and could now fetch a bundle on Antiques Road Show, these collectors are hoping the state warrants issued in lieu of checks will someday have real value — if only sentimental.

“I figure it would be an interesting thing to have around when my grandchildren are fighting over my stuff after I’m dead and gone,” one poster wrote in a recent Craigslist ad offering twice the face value for a California IOU, up to $100…

Madoff’s Celebrity Marks: Where Are They Now?

There’s never a good time to lose a million dollars, let alone tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. And for most of Bernie Madoff’s victims — many of whom lost their life’s savings and are now being forced out of retirement or into a second job in the midst of the worst labor market in generations — a 150-year sentence isn’t a day too long for this seemingly remorseless swindler to be kept behind bars.

Still, some victims are in better shape than others. Among Madoff’s celebrity clients, a lucky few are already on pace to recoup their financial losses by the end of the year, while still others may never recover. Here’s a who’s who list of Madoff’s higher profile marks and how they’re likely to fare in the days ahead…

Job Seekers: Look at Me!

Why did the jobseeker put a shoe in his application? To get a foot in the door. Bah-dum-dum.

It’s come to this: The lingering downturn is turning the job market — and the lengths people will go for an interview — into a bad joke. In a recent CareerBuilder survey, one desperate applicant admitted to the shoe gag. But it wasn’t the worst approach, at least on the sliding scale of coming through desperate times with your dignity intact. Another applicant washed cars in a prospective employer’s parking lot to get noticed. Yet another baked a “business card” cake for an HR manager. And then there’s the guy who paid a CEO’s barber to talk him up during a haircut.

The New Freedom Fifty-Five?

Downsizing just got a little easier.

Until last week, companies may have hesitated to lay off their older, likely more expensive workers, and not just because they’re the ones with more experience and perhaps better equipped to manage business through a downturn. They probably also considered the lawsuits that could come their way.

Under current civil-rights laws, which were amended in 1991, U.S. employers have increasingly been subject to anti-discrimination lawsuits based on age. Since the recession took hold last year, the number of age-bias claims has grown by 30 percent, nearly surpassing the number of race discrimination claims, according the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

But last week, in a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court modified those laws, saying it’s up to fired or laid off workers to prove that age was a key factor in losing their jobs, rather than their employers…

Resume Fictions: Be More Than You Can Be

So you’ve never operated a forklift before. How hard can it be?

If you’re like most jobseekers in today’s shrinking and increasingly competitive labor market, you can’t afford to limit your qualifications to, well, your qualifications.

According to a recent workplace survey, the few employers out there looking for new hires are reporting a sharp increase in trumped up or outright fraudulent resumes. That’s hardly surprising, perhaps, given the dwindling job opportunities now available. This month unemployment hit a 30-year high, while sites like Monster say job postings are down 30 percent in the past year.

For their part, HR managers and other workplace gatekeepers say they can spot fantastical resumes a mile off …