Today's Angel Capital Summit will end with a town hall meeting entitled, Disrupting the Recession: Colorado's entrepreneurial response to the financial crisis, election, energy and sustainability. (read more) It's just $25 to attend the town hall meeting, and the panelists look interesting. Topics of discussion will include:

The Denver Office of Economic Development is hosting a free event on Thursday, December 4th to present financing options available to businesses and real estate developers. Although some financial institutions are lending less freely, local businesses do have options.

Read more about the event, and be sure to pre-register by contacting Artamis Byars at 720-913-1660. We'll be there taking notes and will blog about it here for our members who are unable to attend.

The word is spreading about Buy Local Week. Check out this Your Hub article about Buy Local Week published today. It features MHBA member Talulah Jones and stresses the importance of directing our dollars to locally owned companies this holiday season.

It's official. (and we all saw it coming) News outlets are reporting today that the US economy is shrinking, with consumer spending down 3.1% This means we're half way to an official recession. (which is negative economic growth for two consecutive quarters)

This could be Really Bad News for everyone. When people spend less money, that means less revenue for businesses which have to cut costs. People lose jobs and it becomes harder to pay our bills. So what can we do about it?

Today the BALLE networks participated in a conference call with Doug Hammond (the new E.D. of BALLE) and Michael H. Shuman, author of Going Local and The Small-mart Revolution. Here are some highlights/notes from the call:

There are four primary issues facing our communities and economy:

1. Rising oil / energy costs
2. Climate Change
3. Value of dollar decreasing
4. Recent Financial Crisis

With the economy dominating news and politics, and the market crisis impacting businesses everywhere, we are faced with an uncertain future and real challenges. Investments are literally disappearing off the books, and credit is scarce. We just don't have the money we need to keep our businesses going and to pay our bills. And with local businesses in our neighborhoods closing every day, we can't afford to wait for Washington to figure out a solution that will work for us.

So then what can we do?

Colorado Enterprise Fund recently sent the following message in their newsletter:

A Message From President/CEO, Ceyl Prinster  

Someone has put together a short but compelling video about the emergence of a "Grassroots Economy," one that values collaboration and bottom-up processes. Part of our purpose is to bring together local businesses to work together in creating a solid, stable local economy - one that provides good paying jobs, healthy economic flows and the goods and services we need. Take a look and let us know what you think.

Take a look at this blog post written by Alan Eason. He's an entrepreneur and writes about the current economic crisis and its impact on small businesses. He says:

"Local banks take local money and primarily invest it in the local economy, in giving loans to businesses like mine. There is accountability there. There is a relationship. We are business partners. I would often go over to the bank and just talk, get help, advice and wisdom; not just deal with money. There is a lot more to running a business (and life itself) than just money."

I just read this article in the Washington Post about the proposed $700B bailout of private banking and financial institutions failing in a 228-205 vote in the House. I haven't written about the current market crisis here yet, because I've been contemplating the effect on us, local businesses here in Colorado.