Have you been effected by the economic downturn yet?

earllogjam

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Other than a big dent in my 401K I haven't felt a huge sting yet...other than the news of sporadic layoffs in my area I haven't really seen a big downturn in the number of cars on the road, people eating in restaurants, or people shopping.

Maybe I just live in a recession rain sheltered region of the country. Or the flood just hasn't hit here yet.

Have some of you out there already been effected by the economic crisis on Wall Street?
 

D_Pubert Stabbingpain

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Other than a big dent in my 401K I haven't felt a huge sting yet...other than the news of sporadic layoffs in my area I haven't really seen a big downturn in the number of cars on the road, people eating in restaurants, or people shopping.

Maybe I just live in a recession rain sheltered region of the country. Or the flood just hasn't hit here yet.

Have some of you out there already been effected by the economic crisis on Wall Street?

This is a world wide credit crisis, not a wall street crisis. De-regulation allowed everyone to get huge amounts of debt and now even people without debt can't get a loan.

Not only companies but cities within the Valley of the Sun are laying off workers here. It is not unusual to walk into a grocery store and see isle after isle of only store workers. Many people have started going to Wal Mart and their stock reflects it.

My entire office building was closed 5 months ago and many have had to take huge pay cuts in entry-level jobs to survive. Foreclosures are through the roof even in so-called "upscale" communities. It is rare to drive down a street and not see a For Sale sign and sometimes they are on every other house. One just went up 2 houses down from me yesterday.

Property values are in the toilet and as a result, tax revenues will decline and the infrastructure will go to hell.

Whenever these big companies start to lose money the first thing they can think of is to lay off their own bread and butter, the little guys. My company hired more corporate VP's before and after we were laid off when they should have fired themselves for shitty management.

I could never understand why a company thinks that laying off its workers will help them save money. All it does it take money out of its workers pockets then they can't turn around and buy the products! It's a vicious circle. Hold on to your hats. It is going to be a rough couple of years!

If you have not been affected yet, you will. As for stock market value, everyone is down 30-50% and there seems to be no "safe" place except in Treasuries. Unfortunately, these too may be worthless in a few years along with our currency.

The huge problem that no one seems to be considering up to this point, is that there is a huge population of Baby Boomers who recently or will soon retire and whose retirement income just got flushed down the toilet. They will not be able to survive and social security won't cut it.

If Citibank goes under, who is next?

All of Obama's high hopes will be a backseat to a total lack of money. What a stinking mess to inherit!

Good luck everybody!
:smile:
 

Domisoldo

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Whenever these big companies start to lose money the first thing they can think of is to lay off their own bread and butter, the little guys. My company hired more corporate VP's before and after we were laid off when they should have fired themselves for shitty management.

:smile:

Funny, I have noticed the same irrational behavior at all the corporations I worked for: lay off the core contributors, hire more layers of overpaid parasites.

While waiting for the shit to hit my fan, I am even resisting the temptation to finish paying off my credit card debt. I may well need the cash to simply survive if this downturn proves wide and deep.
 

D_Pubert Stabbingpain

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Funny, I have noticed the same irrational behavior at all the corporations I worked for: lay off the core contributors, hire more layers of overpaid parasites.

While waiting for the shit to hit my fan, I am even resisting the temptation to finish paying off my credit card debt. I may well need the cash to simply survive if this downturn proves wide and deep.

Problem is that I doubt that credit card debt will be "bailed out" as they have to somewhere draw the line and it will again, be us regular folks that get the shaft. Good news is that if the Fed lowers, actually does away with the Prime Rate (rumor is down to zero!), your credit card debt, if it is tied to like a HELOC, will be interest free! As we found out with regular cards, the rate goes up. sons 'a bitches! :rippedhand:
 

vince

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One of the shipyards I do contract work for had a 4.5m euro project cancelled. Our part of it would have been about 20%. The client attributed his decision to the collapse of his share prices.

Fortunately, I decided two years ago to concentrate on the the higher end of the market, which is still ok. The market for boats under 100 feet has more or less collapsed. Over 125 feet, we can't build them fast enough. It seems that in that price range, the people have so much private wealth and iquidity, that credit and the state of the stock market is not an issue. We have three years of work signed and I have no personal or credit card debt, so I'm not too worried.

My sister quit her job as a real estate agent in Florida 13 months ago. Luckily, she put away enough while times were good to weather the current slump. She has started a home business and is keeping busy.
 
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deleted3782

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Have some of you out there already been effected by the economic crisis on Wall Street?

You mean the 40% drop in the value of my stock portfolio?

Or the 40% drop in income for my organization?

Or the drop in revenue for the groups I volunteer for?

Or the spending freeze I might soon need to enact?

I'm old enough to have weathered a few of these recessions, but this one seems longer, deeper, and broader that any other.
 

HellsKitchenmanNYC

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Isn't this a crazy world? My 401 had the hell beaten out of it and the place I worked for 17 yrs went out of bussiness. I'm kinda broke right now but hopefull it will get better. Thank God for selling on Ebay or I'd be REALLY miserable right now!
 

B_Nick4444

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reallocated my portfolio before the downturn, so no impact there

otherwise, the local economy (Texas) is still booming

really haven't noticed anything personally -- still overspending
 

whatireallywant

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I've had a hard time finding a permanent job, and many of my friends also have had a hard time with this. I've mainly worked a series of temp jobs and had some periods where I'm not working at all (I hate those non-working times!), although sometimes I have two temp jobs and work 60+ hours a week!

I'm working retail now and we're really busy! People are still using credit cards, too.

I thought I'd lost a lot on my 401k but I'd actually lost only a little. Fortunately most of my retirement savings were in very low-risk investments. (Although during economic good times, those investments don't grow as rapidly as others.)
 

rawbone8

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The Daily Bread Foodbank (a local Toronto charitable organization) reports some new clients who were formerly in the position of being donors. The spokesman reported that in their estimation this is the edge of a wave that will increase. Toronto is surrounded by automobile manufacturing and is as vulnerable as Detroit is to industry downsizing employment woes.

On a personal level, I've seen my retirement savings funds lose 30% on paper, to date.
 

Drifterwood

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The Daily Bread Foodbank (a local Toronto charitable organization) reports some new clients who were formerly in the position of being donors.

Obviously I can't change things, but I have just given a pretty nice contract to a Toronto Company :smile:

The thing about recessions is that those of us of working age can roll with the punches. I am going to lose money, but I can see and exploit opportunities to make more.

However I really do wonder whether recessions just take money off older people. That is, the money people make them pay. Pretty nasty, but it seems to be the case.
 

rawbone8

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Obviously I can't change things, but I have just given a pretty nice contract to a Toronto Company :smile:

The thing about recessions is that those of us of working age can roll with the punches. I am going to lose money, but I can see and exploit opportunities to make more.

However I really do wonder whether recessions just take money off older people. That is, the money people make them pay. Pretty nasty, but it seems to be the case.

It has struck me that the fore edge of the Baby Boom demographic group has been blessed by good luck all of their lives. It seems that they bought into the expected normal investments (like homes, and dabbling in the stock market or mutual funds) and got hired into positions in the hierarchy of authority before most anyone else, and have as a result of the chance, benefited greatly by the timing of their birth. They enjoyed immense benefits as a result of those following competing for the same resources — thereby driving up the value of those investments. Market logic. Supply and demand.

Sure, they worked hard at attaining their achievements, but were not any more meritorious than the many others who preceded or who followed them, and who were rewarded with less. They were rewarded big time, relative to other demographic cohorts.

It does not seem like a coincidence that the sheep with the fattest pockets have lost the most. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but if you follow the money, it seems suspicious that the masses of people with all of this wealth accorded to them by their birth order in the post war demographic masses, posed a incredibly tempting target for fleecing.

Greenspan's deliberate policy of extremely low interest rates seems to have encouraged (herded?) people to place their investments in anything other than insured bank investments — into real estate and the markets. That drove huge growth when it grew, and has bitten back much of that profit as the correction settles.
 
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Domisoldo

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It seems like a regression, doesn't it? Children doing less well than their parents...
 

D_Kay_Sarah_Sarah

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Yeah, my family's been affected by a layoff. I'm sure I'm not the only one here who can say that.

My dad lost his job and now can't get one.

I haven't been sacked yet but my company is already making arrangements to send my job offshore. And looking at job placements there isn't much other there unless you are a junior or highly qualified (which i am neither). In turn im having to cut down on the little luxuries that were never a problem affording.
 

dannymawg

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Where doors close, others open...

This economic frenzy has shed a lot of light on risk management/assessment and regulatory oversight... or the lack thereof.

I got lucky during all this: I was offered an opportunity to work in just this field, starting in 1Q 2009.

Needless to say, I'm chompin at the bit to start. It's a new frontier...





We've got provisions
And lots of beer
The key word is survival on the new frontier... :biggrin1: