If you subscribe to SBT’s BizTimes Daily, you read the headlines every day. In doing so, you’ve no doubt noticed and anecdotally have felt the impact of the economic slowdown that is upon us.
We are toiling amid $4 gasoline, the subprime foreclosure crisis, the credit crunch and an icy housing market. Us taxpayers are being asked to bail out our banks and now Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. In effect, we’re bailing out ourselves.
In the first half of 2008, most of the economic indicators regularly tracked by the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce (MMAC) are down.
Inflation and unemployment rates are rising. The word “Misery Index” is making a comeback.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke recently said that he believed inflation will moderate in the coming months because the economy is so sluggish, it will keep prices down. Forgive me, but isn’t that akin to saying our winter heating bills are going to be lower this winter because our furnace is broken? He’s essentially saying we’re going to spend less because we’ll have less.
With all of that as a backdrop, the MMAC/Council of Small Business Executives (COSBE) Future 50 program provides a much-needed energy boost to our collective state of mind.
This year, we asked the leaders of the 50 fastest-growing companies in southeastern Wisconsin one special bonus question:
The profiles of the Future 50 winners are posted below in alphabetical order.
