Small Business Not as Usual
Small Business Not as Usual

Hannah Kain, a small-business owner in Fremont, Calif., started her packaging services business, ALOM Technologies, in 1997 with a $250,000 Small Business Administration loan. In 2000, her 70-employee company was singled out as an entrepreneurial success by the agency, complete with a ceremony in San Francisco.
But in 2003, when she lost a government contract to package and distribute informational CDs to military bases around the world, she didn’t bother to turn to the S.B.A. for help.

“I’m not so sure about the overall competency level and the ability to follow through,” Ms. Kain said. “The best you can expect is a list of government agencies you can contact.”

Her assessment reflects a growing frustration among many small-business owners with the agency.

Over the last five decades, the S.B.A. has been there to propel the likes of Federal Express, Intel, Staples and thousands of lesser-known small businesses. But advocates say recent policy changes and severe budget and staffing cuts in the last six years have left the agency unable to fulfill its mission to provide programs and services to the nation’s 25 million small companies, which the agency defines as businesses with 500 or fewer workers. Since 2001, the agency’s budget has been sliced nearly in half, to $464 million in the proposed 2008 budget. Staff cuts have been almost as deep, with the agency losing 31 percent of its work force.
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Bush's Nominee Has New Agenda for Bank
WASHINGTON, May 30 — The World Bank that Robert B. Zoellick stands ready to inherit may be battered, fractious and rudderless. But he said Wednesday that he saw himself not simply as a healer but as a leader ready to establish a new agenda to help the world’s poor.

“On the one hand, one has to calm the waters,” Mr. Zoellick told reporters in the afternoon. “But one also has to start to navigate the course of the future.” At another point he said, “People in the bank recognize that it’s going to have to go through some mission adjustment.” But he declined to specify details.

People close to Mr. Zoellick say that based on his record in past economic and diplomatic jobs, he is likely to bring a demanding approach that could disturb the status quo.

At his session with journalists, Mr. Zoellick signaled that he would retain and build on the anticorruption policies of the departing president, Paul D. Wolfowitz, who resigned nearly two weeks ago after a furor over charges of favoritism.

Mr. Zoellick’s nomination was formally announced Wednesday at the White House, where President Bush praised him for having “earned the trust and support of leaders from every region of the world.” Mr. Bush also praised Mr. Wolfowitz for making the bank “a more effective partner for development.”

The bank’s 24-member board has welcomed Mr. Zoellick’s nomination but said it would accept other nominations until June 15.

But bank officials dismissed the statement as a formality and predicted that the board would move smoothly toward making Mr. Zoellick president, despite reservations by some about the United States’ continuing to exercise its 60-year-old prerogative of filling the job.
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