by Jack Lee
It’s been said we should all be lucky enough to live in interesting times….but, our times say you better be careful what you ask for! Boring sounds real good to me about now. We open the work week with the stock market down again. GM is burning through about $3.1 million an hour, or the price of a well-equipped Cadillac every minute. Ford and Chrysler are not far behind.
Something has to give,. . .
will it be the end of the Big Three? Will it be Chapt. 11 and restructuring or will it be a bailout? A lot of folks are expressing reservations about the bailout plan, but one thing is certain much depends on which path is taken…. in fact, 1.5 million jobs and the financial health of the nation depend on it!
Speaking of jobs. . .
did you hear Citigroup will cut up to 53,000 jobs from its Sept. 30 levels? Citi has lost more than 20 billion in the last year. Fidelity Investments announced they will eliminate 1,700 jobs in the next round of cuts which brings their layoffs to 3000. National Auto Radiator have reduced their unionized workforce to less than 1/5th the size from 20 years ago thanks to declining sales in American made cars and trucks. Tis the season…U.S. Steel is laying off 675 unionized workers, up to 250 local staff could lose their jobs as HP merges with IT services giant EDS, in this last case all is not lost because IBM is eyeing its opportunities to scoop up the staff.
The G-20 . . .
On the other side of the pond the much heralded G-20 summit on Saturday turned out to be mostly symbolic. What has been coined as the new “Countercyclical fiscal policy” revealed the details of an extensive work plan for regulators, but most of it was old policy and it’s likely this could have all been done without making a big show of it and raising expectations. Unfortunately, there’s no quick fix solution to be found, the key word here is cyclical and economies must go through cycles. When government steps in the cure is often worse than the disease.
As this recession deepens and spreads, employees everywhere, from Beijing to Boston, are bracing for a veritable explosion in layoffs that are soon to follow.