Fox News—most people either love it or hate it. I'm indifferent about it, preferring to look at it as I do most media: Take what I hear with a grain of salt and watch out for bias.

Just yesterday, host Greta Van Susteren chatted with David Cho, financial reporter for the "Washington Post" about how small businesses are doing. Cho authored an article in the "Post" Oct. 22 entitled "Rescue efforts shift to small business." The crux of that effort is getting affordable credit into the hands of small businesses.

Fabricating Update subscribers are in businesses that could benefit most from these efforts, provided they are handled properly and in a timely manner. Some subscribers welcome the focus on small businesses, some clearly think properly and timely are not in the government's lexicon, and some think the government should stay the heck out of business altogether.

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Most people with half a brain who actually think about U.S. manufacturing agree that it is suffering. You can't watch or read the news without learning of plant closings, layoffs, furloughs, pay reductions, and growing unemployment lines that include many factory workers, staff, and management.

Help for U.S. manufacturing has been a topic of discussion for years. Politicians dance around the issue (about as well as they do on Dancing With the Stars), commission studies, appoint manufacturing czars, make promises that result in sound bites on the news, throw dollars at a few programs, and then focus on another hot topic, while manufacturing's dilemma simmers—once again—on the backburner.

To solve a problem, you have to go to the heart of it. Here are some thoughts from "Fabricating Update" readers who responded to the September issue's item about the recent appointment of Ron Bloom as the latest in a string of manufacturing czars and asked subscribers what they would tell him if they had his ear.

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On a flight to a manufacturing event last week, I read an article in BusinessWeek that got me pretty down. The headline on the magazine cover screamed, "America's Manufacturing Crisis." The topic: Why stuff's invented stateside and sent abroad for manufacturing.

"While the Japanese, Koreans, Taiwanese, and Chinese plowed billions into megaplants to churn out commodity products, America steamed ahead in more lucrative pursuits, such as software, life sciences, and financial services," the article stated. "As for companies such as Dell and Apple, they could still reap high profits by focusing on marketing and design while letting offshore contractors handle the grunge work."

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The financial wizards are at it again, and this time they're not betting whether you'll default on your mortgage. They're betting on your life.

The financial folks on Wall Street, as always, are looking for certainty and to curtail risk. At one point, mortgages seemed to be a sure thing. People need a roof over their heads, and home prices have always gone up at least somewhere in the country, so if you securitize—that is, package various mortgages for people of varying financial health and geography—you mitigate risk. We all know that logic didn't pan out.

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I understand the term's intent, and that it describes workers who are ever-more-valued. I just have reservations about how the term is used. When people think of a "knowledge worker," they think of a white-collar IT professional, engineer, doctor, or others who think to innovate, using their knowledge to better an organization.

But who doesn't?

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In this case, Karen Mills, an administrator for the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA), visited ALCOM Inc., a Waterville, Maine-based fabricator of recreational trailers and was “energized” to take the tale of this growing manufacturing company back to Washington, D.C. ALCOM is about to leave its 47,000-sq.-ft., rented facility and move to a newly constructed, 70,000-sq.-ft. building in Winslow. Part of the financing for this expansion is coming from a $1.14 million SBA loan, which is a small sliver of the millions of dollars provided under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

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The numbers popping up in the media recently draw an interesting, perhaps conflicted picture of the state of business in the U.S. Here's why.

First, there's unemployment. Like many, I expected the unemployment rate to continue its relentless rise past the symbolic 10 percent mark. It didn't. It fell a bit, to 9.4 percent. Dig a little deeper into the government's official release, though, and you'll find that 14,000 people in the fabricated metal products sector lost their jobs. Machinery-makers shed 15,000. And manufacturing overall shed 2 million jobs since this recession began.

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In the late 1990s I recall renting a VHS tape (remember those?) of a recently aired PBS series called "Triumph of the Nerds." It detailed the rise of the computer industry, from the garages of San Jose to the boardrooms of corporate America.

It's an incredible story, really. The PC business started from nothing and transformed into a multibillion-dollar industry within a decade and a half. The rapid rise happened not just because the technology helped people and businesses become more efficient (though some early adopters debated that). It also did something that at that time no business in the world had ever done: As time went on, products became better and cheaper. This must have raised a lot of eyebrows in a business community browbeaten by years of high inflation and interest rates.

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A visit last week to an OEM of construction equipment made me feel good about manufacturing in America. Based in Salisbury, just north of Charlotte, N.C., Power Curbers Inc. plasma-cuts, saws, welds, and machines parts for curb-making machinery. Like many connected with the construction industry, Power Curbers' business is down considerably, by about 40 percent--not good.

But you wouldn't know it by looking at the lean operation on the floor. Sure, some machines are idle, but employees have single-piece part flow down pat. The shop holds virtually no inventory. As raw material comes in the door, it flows right to the plasma cutters and band saws. Stacks of material are nonexistent. It takes seven days for raw material to be manufactured into a finished machine.

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