by Carol Roth, former investment banker, entrepreneur and author of the new book The War on Small Business, and The Entrepreneur Equation. How could anyone objectively look at the current economic situation and not find the economy utterly broken? Perhaps because with many big companies deemed “essen-tial,” and a stock market propped up by the Federal Reserve, it is easy to look at what appears to be econom-ic strength and miss the glaring weaknesses. While Walmart and Tar-get continue to exceed earnings expectations, small businesses try to stay afloat. According to Alignable’s June Road to Recov-ery Report, “57% of small busi-nesses have only reached half or less of the monthly revenue lev-els they achieved prior to COVID.” Shifting power and money from in-dependent small business owners to a handful of big, powerful companies as a result of politicians’ mandates isn’t something that anyone should be arguing is a good outcome.