Is This Plane Going Down?

This economy is for shit. I know so many people out of work. Really great people with really great skills, great experience, great resumes. And it's like we're in a death spiral here. And guess what, I think we're just about to come back. But Christ, this is really a Chills and Thrills economy. Some freaky amusement park ride of an economy.

Or maybe it's better to call it the "Let Them Eat Cake" economy -- yes, famous last (alleged) words by Marie Antoinette when people were begging for plain bread to keep from starving and all she can say is "Qu'il mange du gateau!" Or "why don't they eat petits-fours, there are a lot of those cute little cakes hanging around my chateaux, what's the big deal?" The French kindof missed the fact that they had eradicated the middle class which is a very dangerous thing to do -- creates a lot of instability -- unless you're turned on by the guillotine.

My day goes like this ... you hear 3 more people you know well who are really good at what they do, correction, really good at what they were DOING -- are out of work and then you hear some company's earnings are 18% higher, like IBM announced today and you think, "What gives?" And then a friend points out that frightening piece from yesterday's Sunday New York Times about this generation of 50 year olds basically being decimated ... I haven't even read it because I couldn't stand one more bit of bad news. In fact, the only good news about the piece is how many people who used to be able to afford a subscription to The New York Times, are out of work, so they probably didn't read it.

So my good news is, we're coming out of this mess, but my bad news is, we may all be working at Chuck E. Cheese with an MBA and 15 years experience as a management consultant, at least for a while..