Just wondering what everyone's thoughts were on the current socioeconomic state of affairs, with companies "Enron-ing" right and left, the Dow dropping like a hot potato loaded with spray-on margarine, and Bush's speech on corporate accountability (which is laughable, since he has been moving further away from keeping the gov't responsible for any of its actions, but that's another topic). Personally, I'm happy, as long as I have a job. Maybe people will start to be held responsible for their actions. It's a symptom of the unfettered greed and "pass the buck" mentality which most Americans seem to have. I'm hoping it'll also mean a move away from gigantic corporations and back to small/medium size businesses, but that's probably a pipe dream. Discuss.

unfortunately, because of the frequency of these instances of "pass the buck" it seems that it's just business (no pun intended) as usual around here. You see it with parenting, co-workers, the education system, corporate america, etc. . .

it's only cheating if you get caught so they say. I guess it's just time for corporate America to pay the piper. Fuck 'em and fry 'em all !!

- ZAPPAJOE (and no ink, i'm not registering)

I think it's intensional.

Why? Because everyone wants big growth in the economy, that's why. And the best way to get big growth is to clear away all those old, stagnant companies to make way for vibrant new ones.

(My logic here is that you have to go down before you go up, so we are purposely going down)

It makes me somewhat nervous, if only because my day job is as a consultant at Citibank. Recent news has not been overwhelmingly inspiring.

I yearn for the days when I am finally self-employed.

In Response to jon (#835):

It could be worse. I have a friend who moved himself, his wife, and his daughter from northern NJ to Pittsburgh last August to accept a great job at Adelphia... while he still has a job, he's working lots of OT to make up for all the people in his department that *have* gotten laid off, and that company has already declared bankruptcy. Keep your fingers crossed... I think Citibank will be okay.

Can't really speak for anywhere else, but down here in the south (Mississippi, to be precise), things aren't too happy. A friend who recently graduated with some sort of I.S. degree is selling vacuum cleaners, after searching for several months, and failing to find a job related to his degree. My girlfriend, who's finishing her M.A. in public relations, is choosing to start work on her Ph.D., since no one is hiring. I know a fair number of others who are choosing to continue their educations beyond where they'd originally intended to, because no one seems to be hiring college graduates, right now. They'd rather go further into debt and get more education, than go further into debt while searching for, and failing to find, a job.

And with the sudden increase in the educated workforce, thanks to WorldCom's layoffs, it looks like things'll continue this way for a while.

I'm in a solidly academic discipline (mathematics), so I'm affected a little less than most; graduate school is pretty much required, if I'm going to make a career out of it. And, while I hate to say it, I'm glad. Maybe the people who already have a job feel pretty okay about things, but the currently unemployed are pretty screwed. This is a bad time to graduate.

In Response to TheWizardofFez (#834):

Oh dear....I'm sure there's a Monica Lewinsky joke here with the purposely/purposefully (delete as appropriate) going down.

Seriously though, it can't have been intentional. Certainly not by the corporate heads who are finally being held accountable. I doubt that any american (or any other nationality) businessman has the sense of altruism and forward thinking to denegrate himself for the good of all. Which means for the "bad before the good" theory to hold, we need a conspiracy (I love those).

I don't see that happening, unless there is a very ironic turnabout with the corporate accountability speech (ref: Incarndine). I missed that one (being in Ireland and all). It is hugely insulting to me as a member of the international community that the US can pull out of the internation courts so that its personnel cannot be tried for war-crime whislt vigourously pursuing Milosevic (I'm not defending him, merely pointin out the hypocracy). But Bushs' (plural - is he continuing the Gulf for his daddy?) wars are beside the point here...

I've just graduated with a computer engineering degree and finding a job is proving very difficult (simon_moon is right - it *is* a bad time to graduate). Oddly enough, here in Ireland, the most sought after people now are accountants and insurance, with IT as required as admin staff. The multinationals are suffering an unprecedented lack of trust, and probably rightly so. When a company gets so big that the left hand knows not what the right is doing (to borrow a phrase), the left will do whatever the hell it wants.

It's a good thing that they are all made culpable, but the cost at last is huge. I am reminded of a poem by Yeats called the Fisherman. It contains a bit about the lack of brave/true souls left from old when all is owned by accountants and the impudence with which they treat the land, and I think of the US:

...
The craven man in his seat,
The insolent unreproved,
And no knave brought to book
Who has won a drunken cheer,
The witty man and his joke
Aimed at the commonest ear,
The clever man who cries
The catch-cries of the clown,
The beating down of the wise...

In Response to simon_moon (#861):

As a college student who is currently six years into a four year degree, due to changing schools, changing majors, educational cutbacks in the current economic hell we like to call sunny south Florida and the like.... I've come to the realization that those student loans don't come due until you leave school...so I say, stay in school forever!!!!

In Response to stilllwaiting (#901):

I too have been caught in the bad new job market, and have decided to continue on to Grad School as well.

Thing about student loans is...when does it get to the point that you owe so much money that you are better off just staying in school for the rest of your life? You know, get a real job, and take a class or two a semester, enough to defer the loans...:)

My thoughts on corporate America are much grimmer than most for I forsee this country as turning into a sort of "vacation" country. Meaning, that all major jobs are being taken out of the United States to countries that have less regulation on pollution, child labor laws, wage rates, daily hours of work, etc. The corporate system benifits the greatest through those evils, and the costs that are saved by doing so. If they can save a buck by relocating they will, and those countries could really care less what those companies do as long as they recieve some big bucks. For example, in Hati, workers for the beloved morally "good" Disney corp. pay about a woping 30 cents a day for a ten hour day in a less than sanitary or safe factory making those over priced T-shirts we think are absolutely adorable. So....while all the work leaves to other countries, what is left in this one? well simple, the benifactors (corporate chiefs living in the life of luxary) and those who use to have a job (everyone else not on the eliete corporate ladder). It is thus no wonder that unemployment is rising and corporate greed is only more happy to rise along with it, thus turning this land into a "vacation" territory and third world countries into the "downtowns" of work. So next time someone says "im comming back from "vacation" they might be telling you that they are going back to work in Thialand.

In Response to TheWizardofFez (#834):

I'ts not that it's purposeful, it's just that it was inevitable, given the incentive systems in place.

The CEOs were being rewarded (by the shareholders) for hitting quarterly targets. There was no reward for saying "the next two years are going to suck, but that's because we're revamping systems to make them an order of magnitude more efficient". Instead, the incentive was to do whatever was possible to get the numbers for this quarter to be in line with "analyst's expectations".

This led to all sorts of other effects, it meant that there were huge incentives to lobby for:

• Lax controls, so that numbers could be "legal" and yet still wrong,
• Lax environmental controls, because they cost money, and who cares if your production is unsustainable over the course of even 3-5 years, as long as you get stuff cheaper this quarter.
• No labor regulations. The rest of the world depends on American consumerism. The reason we have a trade deficit (excluding monetary policy, strong doller, etc), is that we like to buy stuff. Without ensuring jobs and minimum salries/wages,there is a lower credit ceiling reached where we can no longer continue to buy. But laying off workers makes us hit the quarterly numbers, even while destroying the long term economic environment.

Unfortunately, the stock market is still extremely skewed to power for and by rich people who like to make their buck and get out, screwing the rest of us. Hopefully, long-term investment vehicles, such as pension plans, will work hard to convince the comapnies themselves to also look a little longer term.

Being in business school now, however, I doubt it, as none of this type of thing ever seems to come up.

In Response to evilaltor (#898):

Oh damn I'm slow. Took four reads to get that Monica Lewinsky joke.

In Response to phillip (#979):

My apologies. Inevitable is a much better word for it.

Unfortunately, it seems this mentality of "a payoff today is worth the company tomorow" seems to be alive and well, no matter what big shakeups occur.

Case in point: look at the interest rates. Months ago I remember hearing how that lowering interest rates was a risky idea as it sacrificed future growth for short-term growth. Well, guess what? The future is now and there is talk of whether or not all that interest rate reduction really helped us all that much over the long haul.

PS: I love hearing car ads where they say 'ZERO INTEREST'--it's so true!