African-American businesses are an important part of the American economy.

“The top 100 African American industrial/service companies and 100 leading auto dealers … collectively grossed more than $28 billion” in 2007.
– BlackEnterprise.com, viewed September 30, 2008

“America’s competitiveness and economic growth in the global market will increasingly depend on the growth and expansion of minority owned businesses.”
– MBDA.gov, April 1, 2008

African Americans have $29.8 billion in purchasing power.
– diversityaffluence.com, viewed September 29, 2008

With lightening speed, President Barack Obama has moved from Stimulus Package to a Home Foreclosure package, to working on the financial bailout package, and now to the Budget.

In his recent speech to Congress he said something that most people who know anything about government agree with: the budget is not only about spending dollars and cents, it is a statement of priorities and therefore, the most important policy document that reveals the direction he is taking the country.

The other packages were put together to handle the crises that President Obama was handed. But most close observers I have read mark his recently rolled-out federal budget as the most fundamental shift in priorities since Ronald Reagan.

His $3.6 trillion Budget buttresses the direction of spending in the other three packages (the Financial bail out yet to be presented) and it shows a $1.7 trillion deficit for next year, most(…)

The United States is now facing levels of joblessness comparable to those of the Great Depression.

Labor Department data released this month shows in February, employers eliminated 651,000 jobs, the third month in a row that losses surpassed 600,000 – the first time that’s happened since the government began collecting data in 1939.

There are now 12.5 million jobless who make up the official 8.1 percent unemployment rate.

In addition, former full-time workers forced to work part-time now number 8.6 million, up 787,000 in the month from January to February.

What the AFL-CIO says is the “more comprehensive” picture on joblessness – one that includes those who want a job but have stopped searching, as well as those who are forced to work only part-time – is 15 percent.

And then there are the people not being counted by anyone – first-time job seekers who have never found a job.(…)