ok, mustang, let me blunt your enthusiasm.
LOL
not, actually. the company where i am at, the business has dried up due to banks not lending. We develop real estate. We build buildings and lease and sell them. Housing, industrial, office, all sorts.
Office buzz is that more layoffs are due very soon. Its a terrible atmosphere here and no one is busy.
I get an email this morning, an excoworkers friend was part of a big layoff at another firm. Another friend who was laid off from here who found a temp gig may not get hired at that office.....as recently as a month ago, things looked good there. Another engineer friend lost his job a couple months ago and has yet to find anything.
In my industry at least, $h! has hit the fan, people are starting to lose jobs en masse. I've known a few others who have lost jobs in the last 3 months and haven't been able to find anything yet.
Myself, I put off a new vehicle purchase this past weekend when i found out about the severe downturn and layoffs forecasted here. And no glimmer of positivity.
Its all due to the BANKS overreacting and being tight fisted. Credit flow is how they make money, and they just haven't determined how they can do it yet when its not raping the public and taking candy from a baby. So in the interim, the banks decided they will hold us all hostage until the govt bails them out. Bush's last hurrah. Line the pockets of a bunch of people who will make a killing on undervalued assets. Buy em cheap with the govt covering the losses, and then resell them and make a killing.
The company I work at is no fly by night. We make money, our credit is stellar, and have been in business a long time. We're one of the top performers in what we do. If we can't even get any money, then something is amok.
I don't know why everyone is putting our lives on hold until the election and after. the bailout BS only makes the whole thing worse.
I still go back to this. The root of all the problems the last few years, people's incomes have gone down, or jobs been outsourced...and in the meantime energy, food, all that went up exponentially. Had people's wages kept pace, there wouldn't be a real estate bubble. Prices would have levelled and stagnated and that would have been fine.
People don't need and shouldn't tap home equity to buy a new Lexus. One thing i will say. Those that did do that stuff need to now buy chevy's and fords like the rest of us. Maybe all the glorification of expensive imports will end and maybe we'll get sensible criticism of bread and butter cars again. Because more and more folks will have to stoop and buy that.
I was pleased to see GM get back to 27% share and only have a 16% drop last month. Toyota and Nissan though....OUCH!