Deadbeat Companies Deserve an Obama Wakeup Call: Jonathan Alter

We all know that small business is the engine of the U.S. economy. It accounts for almost two-thirds of all jobs created in the past decade.

But nowadays small business is recovering more slowly than big business. While capital spending at small firms is up, according to a PNC Bank survey, 60 percent of small-business owners are delaying hiring. Why? I’ll defer to the economists on the complex explanations but one simple one has been overlooked: corporate deadbeats.