President Barack Obama signed into law a measure meant to create jobs
President Barack Obama signed into law a measure meant to create jobs by helping small firms raise capital.
Obama was joined by one of his chief antagonists in Congress, Republican House of Representatives Majority leader Eric Cantor, and other lawmakers to sign the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act at the White House.
Cantor said the signing of the law was a “significant step” and added “we can’t stop here. Republicans and Democrats need to continue working together to produce results for our nation’s small business owners and entrepreneurs.”
Cooperation between the two parties on job creating measures in election year has been fleeting however, with the two sides deeply split on the best economic policies to create growth.
Obama’s political fortunes, as he seeks re-election, have been boosted in recent weeks by growing momentum in the economy and jobs growth which has taken the unemployment rate down to 8.3 percent.
The latest Labour Department figures show the US unemployment dropped unexpectedly to 8.2 per cent in March. The economy created a meager 120,000 jobs in March, much lower than the 200,000 forecast by economists.
The Silicon Valley-backed JOBS law, was amended to include extra investor protections in crowdfunding, the increasingly common practice of using the Internet to gather a number of capital investors for a project.
With unemployment and the sluggish recovery key issues in his re-election bid, Obama earlier this year pushed for measures to aid small businesses and start-up companies that create most of the new jobs in the US economy.
A provision of the JOBS Act would allow small enterprises to more easily go public if they wish, by stripping out certain accounting restrictions for newly public companies.
Such “emerging growth companies” would enjoy relaxed rules under the Securities and Exchange Commission, and while this part of the bill can be seen as a reduction of transparency, it will make running a newly public company less expensive.
When we hear “relaxed”, we hear “fraud” and “scam”!
Hope not!
Source AP