I don’t mean to get anybody’s hopes up but …

There was a lot of that in Washington last week, wasn’t there? Particularly Democrats from both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, who saw those jobs numbers come down the pike on Friday and were dying to crow about President Obama’s “successful” economic policies but didn’t dare.

There are still way too many people out of work for anybody to be making happy noises about economic data … unless they are feeling politically suicidal.

It’s mean of me to say this but it was kind of funny to watch.

It is to be hoped that economic development professionals are paying attention to the Aspen Institute research covered in this week’s News Briefs. Student-run MDOs promise to be a reasonably low cost way of bringing microenterprise development and support to communities that may not otherwise have the budget to launch a new program.

That may be especially good news in rural communities that have colleges attached to them. From the research, it appears that it doesn’t even have to be a huge college or university. Perhaps even the local community college will get the job done. It’s certainly worth exploring, I suspect.

Plus, we have a bill introduced by Senate Small Business Committee Ranking Member Olympia Snowe (R-ME) to actually get rid of a program that bids to lose a bunch of taxpayer money, and this week’s Policy Matters column.

For more information:

• U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics
• Study: “Can Student-run Microfinance Organizations Help Address Issues of Scale and Sustainability in the U.S. Domestic Microenterprise Industry?”
• S. 2777, A bill to repeal the American Recovery Capital loan program of the Small Business Administration (THOMAS)