Skip to main content

Update on my recession post

A while ago I wrote a blog entry about the 10 ten reasons the recession will never end. Since then, there's been some developments, so I thought I'd go back and see if those 10 reasons still hold.

1) Crashes hurt for a long time - unchanged

2) Until debt do us part - unchanged Standard and Poor's recently put the US debt on a negative credit watch

3) Lowest common denominator thinking - unchanged


4) Eroded Trust - unchanged

5) Anxiety - unchanged-- perhaps slightly better, but not enough to make a positive difference




6) Growth (innovation) versus Replacement Cycles - unchanged Cisco just announced that it will be laying off thousands of employees. Meanwhile Google announced it will be hiring thousands of employees. Unfortunately, Google is the exception. Innovation is not ramping up globally and we are still in a crunch pattern that is more about replacement cycles than anything else. 


7) Shareholder model is breaking down - unchanged. The market seem stuck at their current levels and we are not seeing people flood back in to the market eager to own stocks. They remain on the sidelines invested in bonds, gold and other safe investments.



8) Globalization - unchanged

9) Baby Boomer costs - unchanged


10) Extremism - unchanged. Yes, Bin Laden was killed, which lowers fears of terrorism, but we had the tsunami in Japan. In my previous post I commented that I thought these events would continue to get bigger and more extreme, and the Japan quake and insuing disaster unfortunately seems to indicate this to be the case. The death toll from the quake was up near 15,000. 

Bonus) Infalation - worse! Gas prices keep going up and up. 

So there you have it, pretty much nothing has changed in the past few months. For this recession to truly end I'd argue that you need at least four or five of the above variable to turn positive and unfortunately I don't see a single one with the possibility of doing so.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Morgan Freeman Botches Reddit IAmA - Black Eye on PR

For those not familiar with Reddit it's basically a forum where people post interesting things on a wide variety of subjects. Postings gain popularity when people 'up vote' them and become more visible in their particular subreddit (a subreddit is simply a subject category, like politics or videos). One of Reddit's most popular subreddits is the IAmA subreddit - which allows reddit users to ask questions of various people. Over three million people subscribe to IAmA, which is also widely used by celebrities. An IAmA can last a couple hours during which Redditors (the term Reddit users call themselves) can ask the person doing the IAmA questions. The term "IAmA" comes from the concept of "I Am A doctor, ask me anything", "I Am A movie star, ask me anything" - you get the drift. IAmA's are not just for celebrities, lots of common folks do them as well. Recently Morgan Freeman did an IAmA  and it turned into a PR mess. To make a lo...

Mainstream versus Alternate Media - Where is the news now-a-days?

It's well known that CNN has been suffering an exodus of viewers, losing over half their viewership over the past couple of years. Yet Fox News has not lost viewers, but has increased its viewership slightly. It's an odd phenomena given that Fox news is clearly biased in their coverage. Mind you, so is CNN according to many. But I'd suggest it comes down to something much more simple.  While Fox may be holding its ground, the rise of alternative media is taking off where CNN left off - a focus on hard news. For those of the under 40 crowd, that's what they are looking for, NEWS. The simplest way to highlight the difference between mainstream media and alternative media is to take a look at their homepages and the stories they highlight. It becomes very clear why people are turning away from CNN and turning to alternative media. Let's look at five media sites and their homepage (click on pictures to enlarge): CNN Feature stories: CNN heroes Top t...

E-cigarettes: A PR battle Health Canada cannot win?

So I've now been using an e-cigarette (e-cig) for two months and thought I'd talk a bit about how I see the upcoming battle between Health Canada and e-cigs going. First though, let's do a quick overview of what exactly an e-cig is. Basically an e-cig vaporizes liquid that contains nicotine. The vapor is then inhaled. People who use e-cigs are called vapers (not smokers). Because the liquid is atomized (ie. vaporized), not burned the way tobacco is, vapers do not consider themselves 'smokers' in anyway. An e-cig is comprised of basically three components: The tank - this is the component that holds the juice (sometimes referred to as e-juice or e-liquid). The atomizer - this a coil and wick unit that atomizes the juice. When the coil is heated (from the battery) it atomizes the juice that has soaked into the wick. The battery - batteries for e-cigs come in various capacities (some last 8 hours, others 40+ hours, depending on their size).  The ba...