 Rob Nance,Publisher |
By Rob Nance, Publisher - Our internal mantra at AccountingWEB regarding the gloomy economy is that we are "choosing not to participate." Our business is growing thanks to you, the readers and advertisers who faithfully turn to us for your respective needs.
We are all in vibrant, exciting industries. Tell your clients not to participate in this bad economy. It’s certainly a time to be prudent, but it’s also a time to elevate levels of creativity, innovation and to take a few risks. This storm will eventually pass. I invite all of you to say "I am choosing not to participate in this bad economy!" Breathe in the opportunities that surround us all and blaze new trails!
Frankly, despite what the general media shoves down our throats, this is a pretty darned exciting time to be in the business world.
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We haven't reached bottom yet
One of the biggest problems our economy has is that we're all down in the dumps and not being optimistic. That having been said, I don't think we've reached bottom yet.
I'm hearing that there are going to be healthy layoffs at some of the firms in the next eight weeks. In particular, a headhunter told me that one of the big four firms is going to be laying off 30 professionals across my state in the next week. We've also seen some healthy layoffs at Top 100 firms as well. My market has had the HQ's of three major private employers liquidate in the last three months.
I'm also hearing that the consulting groups and special project people are being hit particularly hard in this downturn. This is not a good sign when we talk about emerging from the recession. In the past, groups like the Resolution Trust Corp, FDIC, Wall Street Firms, and others hired massive numbers of accountants to help them do special projects like evaluate and set up record keeping systems for entities which purchase distressed paper at bargain prices and collected on it. I'm not sure if it's the impact of technology on these transitions (less grunt work to do than in the past), a lack of liquidity/capital in the markets, or just fear, but I'm not seeing people injecting capital into the marketplace. This could be the impact of the new laws letting bankruptcy judges rewrite mortgages (and the new discounts that will be priced into these securities), or if it's concern about inflation (since the money supply has tripled in the last year), but we're not seeing any confidence in the economy. Maybe we need to play baseball or join the cheerleaders or something to get our confidence as a nation back... I'm not sure.
To borrow some characters from E.E. Milne's Pooh and Friends series, my thought for the day is that we need Pooh (realist), not the previous administration's Tigger (unrealistically optimistic), or the current Eeyore (unrealistically pessimistic) at the helm of our economy. We're going from medium right to hard left, and I think everyone is a little seasick from all of the rocking of the boat which has taken place in the last six weeks. Personally, I'm not sure who all of these "rich" people are in private business who are going to pay for all of this big government, but I'm thinking that the strategy may be to create so much inflation that $250K is the same as $50K now, and then anyone who makes more than minimum wage will be "rich" and get taxed 15 ways to Sunday.
We're all going to be fine. We just need to get our bearings, take some Dramamine, and wait for things to calm down a little bit. The people I really worry about are those who don't have any education or skills and who can't or won't get any, or the people who are used to living $150K lifestyles on $50K skills (UAW, etc.). They're going to have a tough road ahead.