This is CBS, I on the world, I'm John Batch.

The Business of America is small business.

Gene Marks is here.

He's a small business columnist for the Guardian newspaper, UK and US edition,

the Philadelphia Inquire, a a hometown newspaper and other distinguished

publications.

We're looking at Small Business Uncertainty Index.

Gene, what does that tell us about the future?

How far into the future? because small business watches very carefully

the pennies and dollars that are the economy.

Thank you.

Yeah, John, and again, I want to explain that the National Federation of Independent Businesses puts out this survey every month.

I'm always very wary of reading surveys that are put out by different organizations.

And I also want to be clear, I believe it is just me I know some people agree but you know they do tend to skew a little bit to the right this organization but they've produced good data for like more than 40 years and they do it on optimism and they do it

on uncertainty. It's interesting to me that the NFIB is showing that

optimism has hit the highest level that it has in a year, but so has uncertainty has also spiked.

So you've got small business owners that are feeling optimistic about the future, and yet,

you know, they're very uncertain as to what that future is going to

hold. Listen uncertainty has always been around John you and I have been having so many

conversations over years and we talked about uncertainty among businesses.

I don't think that high levels of uncertainty is necessarily a bad thing.

I think that they're opportunity.

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