Sie's 'Success Plan' aims to create 1M jobs
Denver Business Journal, MSN Money
John Sie has proposed an economic-stimulus plan that he says will generate nearly 1 million new jobs and increase the nation's GDP by almost $600 billion in five years -- and return money to U.S. taxpayers by year two.
And the founder of Starz Entertainment, who retired in 2004, has enough clout to:
-- Get the University of Denver's Daniels College of Business and the University of Colorado's Leeds School of Business to join in a research project, studying the effects of Sie's proposals. The schools released the results of phase one of the study on Wednesday, and will begin phase two the week of Oct. 19.
-- Line up bipartisan support in Congress for two bills, already drafted, to implement the program, called the "Incentivize Success Plan."
Sie's plan is designed to make it easier for banks to lend money to small businesses (five to 500 employees). It calls for the U.S. government to create a loan facility of $15 billion to back bad loans, up to 80 percent. The loans would go only to small businesses that are growing, and have a proven product or service. But, Sie said, the real money outlay would be only $300 million in the first year, and that job creation would lead to more income taxes and business taxes, creating a surplus of $355 million in the second year and $1.3 billion by year five.
Phase one studied whether or not there was a need for such a program, and included businesses of all sizes. "If you put together a program, with no constraints on the industry or size, and set a dollar amount you would invest, what would it look like?" is how Ron Rizzuto described phase one. He's a professor of finance at Daniels, and co-director of the Reiman School of Finance there. more>
