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Small Business Trends has reprinted an article by Susan Reid --business coach and author of Discovering Your Inner Samurai: The Entrepreneurial Woman's Journey to Business Success- -in which she writes that now is the time to drop prices. This period of early but slow recovery is the right spot because "things are about to take off" for small businesses. She points to the film Mr. Mom, set in the recession of the early 1980s (Terri Garr and Michael Keaton fans: you'll have to read the full article--link below--to catch the relevance). And she outlines the right approach with these key pieces of advice: Create an esprit de corps. Don’t set yourself apart from your target market. Find a way to connect with them emotionally and show them you are all in the same boat. Example: We’ve all been through a lot during this recession and have gone through some tough times. Make sure you use strong wording when lowering your prices. Don’t be namby-pamby. Let folks know exactly what you are doing in bold, strong language. Example: We’re slashing the price of our services in half! Be entirely transparent and upfront about why you are lowing your prices. Don’t let there be a whiff of anything slightly off about your offer. Let people know exactly why you are lowering prices. Example: We know that many of you have wanted to use our services but found our prices were out of your budget. Be entirely clear in your call to action. Don’t apologize for asking them to take action. Tell them exactly what you want them to do and why. Example: Check us out again! We’ve dramatically lowered the price on most of our products. Tell folks when you will be going back to your regular prices. Don’t waffle around about when you will return to regular pricing. Tell them what you’ll be doing and when. Example: In six months, when the economic crisis is over, we’ll go back to our regular prices. Read Begin Your Economic Recovery. Lower Your Prices Now! here .

The Federal Open Market Committee met today and decided to keep the federal fund rates at 0 to 0.25 percent. So while the FOMC stated that it sees positive signs in the economic data, it is not ready to forgo monetary policy measures designed to push recovery, and it is not concerned about inflation at this point. From the press release: In these circumstances, the Federal Reserve will continue to employ a wide range of tools to promote economic recovery and to preserve price stability. The Committee will maintain the target range for the federal funds rate at 0 to 1/4 percent and continues to anticipate that economic conditions are likely to warrant exceptionally low levels of the federal funds rate for an extended period. To provide support to mortgage lending and housing markets and to improve overall conditions in private credit markets, the Federal Reserve will purchase a total of $1.25 trillion of agency mortgage-backed securities and up to $200 billion of agency debt. The Committee will gradually slow the pace of these purchases in order to promote a smooth transition in markets and anticipates that they will be executed by the end of the first quarter of 2010. As previously announced, the Federal Reserve’s purchases of $300 billion of Treasury securities will be completed by the end of October 2009. The Committee will continue to evaluate the timing and overall amounts of its purchases of securities in light of the evolving economic outlook and conditions in financial markets. The Federal Reserve is monitoring the size and composition of its balance sheet and will make adjustments to its credit and liquidity programs as warranted. Read the full release here .

Top Chief Financial Officers have earned their keep through this recession as the credit crunch has put a lot of companies in tight spots. IF the recession does end in the coming months, CFOs will have to shift gears and help steer companies through a whole new set of challenges. McKinsey Quarterly offers up ten questions to consider for this next phase. For example, question 2: Have you restructured enough? A weak economy makes it easier to implement unpopular operational changes and divestitures: companies have more leverage over suppliers, unions and regulators are more cooperative, and employees understand the need for change. When the economy strengthens, these advantages will quickly vanish. CFOs should challenge their colleagues to examine how much more restructuring might be undertaken to secure a company’s cost position for the medium term. And question 9: Do you know what risks a recovery might bring? Risk management and contingency planning are typically better at highlighting day-to-day issues than at anticipating major shifts. Yet an economic turnaround could bring a number of structural changes, some relatively predictable and with far-reaching effects. How well, for example, do you understand your company’s exposure to major currency or commodity price movements? Do you know whether the health of channels, customers, or suppliers might create substantial structural change or whether your company is prepared to deal with high levels of volatility that may continue even as a recovery builds? Read the full list and get into the conversation here .

Wall Street Journal economics editor David Wessel says there "isn't any doubt where the global economy is now," after yesterday's report from the IMF that we're in the midst of the worst global recession since the Great Depression. And just as the US dragged the world down into this recession, so too with the US be the driving force for recovery. In this short video, Wessel lays out three possible scenarios for where the economy is going (spoiler alert: "quick recovery" is not one of the scenarios):