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Part of a series about small businesses in America

When it comes to job creation, politicians talk about small businesses as the engines of the U.S. economy. It's been a familiar refrain among politicians from both major parties for years.

'Not Just A Restaurant'

Economists say such job growth is all about new firms — startups — but not all of them. Most startups will actually fail. The second most likely outcome is that they'll start small and stay small. Just a tiny fraction start small and then grow fast, creating an outsize share of new jobs. One such company is Sweetgreen, which dishes out fast, fresh organic salads in compostable bowls at 20 locations on the East Coast.

Pedro Ceron manages the restaurant near Capitol Hill. He's worked for the company for a little more than a year and is one of about 570 people now employed by Sweetgreen. Six years ago, it was just a little shack of a shop in D.C.'s Georgetown neighborhood, says co-founder Nicolas Jammet.

"It was 560 square feet, and most people told us that you couldn't open a restaurant in that space or that size. But we were college seniors, and we wanted to do it; so we did it," Jammet says.

“ [Government] loan programs, I would say, would be better targeted towards young businesses than small businesses per se.

Emblematic of the sense of hatred and distrust in the city, there was a bomb threat lodged against King, who came to speak in Dallas just a few months before Kennedy got there.

On the Mink Coat Mob Riot, a notorious confrontation between Lyndon Baines Johnson and a group of Dallas protesters four days before the 1960 presidential election

It was an amazing scene and one that's been exiled to the corners of history. It's really something we need to be mindful of. LBJ and Ladybird Johnson were attacked by a mob of Dallas' leading citizens during a campaign stop in downtown Dallas. In the lobbies of the two finest hotels in Dallas, it was a melee: people swinging signs at them, they were spitting at them, people were pulling hat pins out of their hats and trying to stab people. It became known as the Mink Coat Mob Riot ...

Some historians say that folks then voted for LBJ and Kennedy in sympathy and that put them both in the White House. The very thing that people in Dallas, some people in Dallas in this Mink Coat Mob — the finest citizens in the city — did not want to have happen.

On the nature of the Mink Coat Mob

It's those scary moments when you see a face coiled in rage. You see behind [LBJ] these faces twisted in anger and hate. Then, again, almost the unlikely nature [of the mob]: You look at the full frame and these are people who are dressed literally in mink coats, suits, ties, people taking a break for lunch during their business endeavors. It really looks like society unhinged. Something's gone horribly, horribly awry in Dallas.

“ Something's gone horribly, horribly awry in Dallas.

Starting a new job is always tough. You want early success to prove you really were the right pick.

That's especially true if you happen to be the first woman to hold that job. Ever.

So when President Obama on Wednesday nominated Janet Yellen to lead the Federal Reserve, she might have had two reactions: 1) Yippee and 2) Uh-oh.

As Fed head, Yellen would have to guide interest-rate policy in a way that boosts economic growth without triggering inflation.

The pressures would be enormous. Example: Just as Yellen's appointment was being rolled out, the International Monetary Fund was warning that if the Fed were to mishandle timing of a gradual move to higher interest rates, it could cause $2.3 trillion in global bond portfolio losses.

So from Day 1 on the new job, any slip-up could trigger an economic calamity.

But when introducing her as his choice, Obama expressed confidence, saying she's "extremely well-qualified" and "renowned for her good judgment."

Most of her peers predict Yellen, 67, will be able to handle the pressure.

"Dr. Yellen is superbly qualified," said a letter signed by more than 500 leading economists who urged the White House to nominate her. "She has shown consistently good judgment in all her roles leading our nation's financial institutions and economic policy."

Even many economists opposed to White House policies have voiced respect for Yellen.

"Her forecasts, as it turns out, have been more accurate" than those who feared the Fed was being too loose with monetary policy, according to Stephen Oliner, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative research group.

For weeks, economists and bankers have been warning that there will be catastrophic consequences if Congress fails raise the nation's borrowing limit.

They say it will mean the nation will default on its debt, which could rock U.S. and global markets. The Treasury has warned that it will exhaust the "extraordinary measures" it has been using to keep paying the nation's bills by Oct. 17.

"To actually permit default, according to many CEOs and economists, would be — and I'm quoting here — 'insane,' 'catastrophic,' 'chaos,' " President Obama has said. "These are some of the more polite words. Warren Buffett likened default to a nuclear bomb."

But to a small group of Republicans in Congress, these warnings are just a lot of hype. They believe the country will not default, even if the debt ceiling is breached, and all the fuss about the debt limit is just fear-mongering.

"To suggest that we can't pay our debts — that's absolutely not true," says Rep. Phil Gingrey of Georgia.

The Republicans in this group have different theories about why the country is not going to default, but the conclusion is the same: Let Oct. 17 come and go without raising the debt ceiling, and America's going to be A-OK.

One common theory: The U.S. will have enough cash on hand to pay Treasury bondholders and everybody else for a long time.

"We can honor our Social Security claims," Gingrey says. "Social Security checks will go out. Medicare claims will be honored."

The problem with that theory is twofold. First, cash-flow: The money going out can be more than what's coming in on any given day. Second: The total going out is a lot more than what's coming in. In the last fiscal year, the U.S. ran a $600 billion deficit.

Economists say if the U.S. can't borrow more money after Oct. 17, a lot of people — including Social Security recipients — won't get paid.

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