Small Business | featured news

To win in the fast-growing digital-advertising market, Web companies such as Facebook, Google and Groupon are increasingly wooing mom-and-pop businesses.

Martin Foil's company sells yarn that winds up in clothes from the Gap, Ralph Lauren and American Apparel, and business is growing. He's buying new machines and hopes to hire as many as 200 workers this year....

U.S. small-business owners believe a U.S. economic recovery is unlikely to accelerate before the second half of 2011 amid worries about issues such as healthcare costs, according to a quarterly survey.

Money for loans backed by the Small Business Administration that could be used for hiring and expansion had been delayed for weeks in Congress.

Cubans will be allowed to work for themselves in 178 activities in the private sector and even hire employees, according to guidelines published Friday as the communist government moves quickly to shed half a million state jobs and provide alternatives for workers.

The measure's passage ends months of partisan delay. The wait for action was agonizing for small-business owners, many of whom have been seeking loans for months in the tight credit market. Ending months of partisan delay, the House gave final passage Thursday to a small-business tax and lending assistance bill, handing Democrats a legislative victory on the economic issues central to the midterm elections.

The GOP gubernatorial candidate promises to cut spending and suggests that lower taxes and less regulation will spur business. But experts say the bleak economy is mostly due to the real estate crisis.

The legislation, which had been delayed by Republican opposition, would establish a $30 billion credit fund.

President Obama held his first full-scale White House news conference in three months and the first of the fall campaign season. He announced his promotion of the White House economist, Austan D. Goolsbee, to succeed Christina Romer as chairman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, and also addressed other issues of the day, including the Middle East peace talks and the debate over extending the Bush tax cuts.