>>> > while people are expecting and not questioning re-structuring >>> Unfortunately, it is quite real, Jinx. :( >> Not being in the corporate loop, and perhaps in the wrong country >> to appreciate the scale, I hadn't realised that this is so. My apologies >> for any insensitivity > > No harm done. Indeed not. I'm not sure why Jinx is apologising. If I skim-read his response correctly I thought he was suggesting that people would be taking the opportunity to reduce staff that they had wanted to previously, but had been prevented from doing so by legal or soietal obligations. There seems vanishingly little doubt that that will be happening, along with the cutbacks that are directly vaused by the more recently visible problems. >> Where to from here then ? > Economic cycles are a part of the capitalist system. The current recession > will be over, eventually -- followed by an up-cycle. It will be alright, > in > the end. :) It will be average in the end when adequately smoothed or curve fitted. It will not be "all right". Much (most?) of the present problems were highly predictable and predicted AND caused by untrammeled (or inadequatelytrammeled) greed, stupidity, illegal acts and general grasshopper immorality). Most of those who now suffer are the ants who worked while the grasshopers* sang and played. And will continue to suffer while the grasshopers largely get to play another day. Capitalsim, per se, as aopposed to per USActually, is not about cheating, conniving, shonky schemes that are manifestly immoral or ... . All that is human nature writ large and protected by your buddies at the top while the have nots have even less (sounds very biblical put that way)(interestingly). Capitalism doesn't even in purist form HAVE to have economic cycles and shake outs and boom bust and more. They are the add on products of greed, stupidity, maybe I can if they don't catch me, maybe I can if they don't realise etc. Ideally [tm] 'supply and demand' COULD produce the most efficient result rather than results that need to be more efficient than they are able to be. But, none of that will convince anyone as yet unconvinced of anything, and the choir are too busy working to feed their families to read it, even if they wanted to. :-) :-( See A&G at end. Russell Giggoil: ant grasshopper 76,000 strikes. Shouldn't be too hard. Just in case ant grasshopper subprime 1570 _______________________ Just one such: http://www.lewrockwell.com/walker/walker30.html An ant laboriously tunneled into MIT and carried around calculus books of 100 times her own body weight, earning an IT degree and an MBA. Then she secured a business loan and worked on her startup corporation 16 hours a day, 24/7, all summer long. Her company made software that cured cancer, wiped out computer viruses, and walked your dog, all for $39.95 with free updates. A grasshopper was blown into Florida State by a hurricane, and majored in UV Absorption and Socializingology, drinking and singing with the other grasshoppers. Eventually he was dragged off the beach and forcibly graduated with a degree in Orthoptera Studies. He spent the summer at a cushy job in an air-conditioned office in a large bank and spent every evening singing in karaoke bars. Once a week he would take a pile of nonperforming mortgages, chop them up into tranches, and mark half of the tranches "AAA" while chirping cheerily. Then he would sell them to the other insects at high prices. The ant was putting together the 401(k) options for her ant employees' retirement accounts when she noticed the grasshopper's subprime offerings hiding among real bonds in bond funds, banks, brokerages, and as prizes in cereal boxes. The ant carefully avoided buying any subprime debt, "AAA" or not. The ant and her employees put all their savings into bonds and stocks from companies that made good products that other insects really wanted. When winter came, the subprime tranches that the grasshopper had sold all withered away and turned to dust, even the ones he had marked "AAA." The grasshopper's bank, the banks that had bought securities from them, and the Carlyle Group's hedge fund all had empty larders. actually more than empty, because they owed more than they had. So the Federal Reserve printed up hundreds of billions of dollars and Treasury bonds and gave them to the grasshopper in exchange for the dried-up dust of the subprime securities, because the grasshopper's bank was "too big to fail." The grasshopper was also allowed to borrow from the Fed at a special cheap rate that no one else could get, "to give him liquidity." The grasshopper went on to his next scheme, which was to securitize tranches of nonperforming time-payment agreements for large-screen TVs (these were called "subprimetime securities"). The grasshopper became wealthier and wealthier, and his offshore corporate shells lived happily ever after in the Cayman Islands. The ant and all her employees went bankrupt because their customers couldn't afford to buy software or CAM machines when gasoline cost ten dollars a gallon. The ant couldn't get a loan to start another company because of the credit crunch created by the grasshopper. The ant retirement accounts were so reduced in value from inflation that they could never retire, and the ants spent their last years working as the grasshopper's servants with no medical insurance. The grasshopper looked down from his office tower at the scurrying ants carrying heavy burdens far below. Then the grasshopper knew: "It is best to be the one who prints the money, not the one who works." -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist