You could be forgiven for thinking that CEOs are a bit relieved by the events of 2023. The long-predicted recession has not manifested (at least, not yet), while a "new normal" of hybrid work has settled in, with remote employees largely back in offices regularly between Tuesdays and Thursdays. And then the historic collapse of Silicon Valley Bank in early March, although it initially sent ripples through the Bay Area, D.C., and Wall Street, did not metastasize into the kind of contagion that sets off a financial crisis. Kevin O'Leary, though, the Shark Tank star and chairman of O'Leary Ventures, sees a different landscape—a bad one.
As watchers of the hit ABC series (and its Canadian predecessor, Dragons' Den) know all too well, "Mr. Wonderful" is a successful investor in hundreds of small businesses, so he knows from up-close practice what the regional banks aren't advertising widely: They have stopped lending. Capital call requirements resulting from commercial real estate distress, he told Fox Business host Larry Kudlow on Sept. 15, are “causing chaos.” At the same time, he noted that the Internal Revenue Service has issued an immediate moratorium on employee retention credit claims for small businesses. O'Leary said that, as far as he knew, that was the only active program where businesses could get capital right from the government, and now it's been shut down. The pandemic-era relief program was halted amid rising concerns of fraudulent claims, according to the IRS, although it's one of many similar programs that have ended. For parents, the end of subsidies to childcare facilities has become known as the "childcare cliff."
