Twenty-five people at the heart of the meltdown ... | Business | The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/jan/26/road-ruin-recession-individuals-economy

Hall of shame...if they have any.

The worst economic turmoil since the Great Depression is not a natural phenomenon but a man-made disaster in which we all played a part. In the second part of a week-long series looking behind the slump, Guardian City editor Julia Finch picks out the individuals who have led us into the current crisis

... and six more who saw it coming

To paraphrase one shopping expert, nearly everyone wants better deals on everything these days. Craigslist is a great place to get those deals, and you don't have to be a jerk to get them.

To paraphrase one shopping expert, nearly everyone wants better deals on everything these days. Craigslist is a great place to get those deals, and you don't have to be a jerk to get them.

Before the credit crisis, the world was awash with money. Now central banks are pumping in more than ever before and still everyone is short. Dan Roberts explains the illusion of wealth.

Yahoo! Finance looks at some big companies who are on the razor's edge.

Loehmann's Capital Corp. (Privately owned; about 1,500 employees). This clothing chain has the right formula for lean times, offering women's clothing at discount prices. But the consumer pullback is hitting just about every retailer, and Loehmann's has a lot less cash to ride out a drought than competitors like Nordstrom Rack and TJ Maxx. If Loehmann's doesn't get additional financing in 2009 - a dicey proposition, given skyrocketing unemployment and plunging spending - the chain could run out of cash.

blistering

s like Hadoop. All of these are mature, high capable, and new ways of tackling the enormous challenges that large-scale co

business for the economic

While some might look at the social aspects of things like Web 2.0 as marginal subjects when things get tough, nothing could be further from the truth when it comes to the deeper implications of Web 2.0 in the enterprise. Many of the more transformational aspects of the 2.0 era now have extensive groundwork laid for them, are available in genuinely enterprise-ready solutions/pilots, and many have just been waiting for the right situation; the driving need for businesses to change and transform in the face of radically different business conditions.

save

Dubai threatens to become an instant ruin, an emblematic hybrid of the worst of both the West and the Middle-East and a dangerous totem for those who would mistakenly interpret this as the de facto product of a secular driven culture.

And so it goes, quite predictably too.... "As people scramble for the exits in Dubai, there is no ‘key mail’, like in America, where people can often mail back their house keys and walk away from a mortgage without the immediate threat of jail. People are literally fleeing this place, to date leaving 3000 cars stranded at the airport with keys still in the ignition. And the reason for this is that if you default on your Dubai mortgage, you can end up in a debtors prison. Perhaps Dubai will at least create a new Dickens?"

"people who have hundreds of millions or a billion in the bank are not going to change their lifestyles"

Great little animation that explains why the credit markets have frozen.

The Short and Simple Story of the Credit Crisis. Crisisofcredit.com The goal of giving form to a complex situation like the credit crisis is to quickly supply the essence of the situation to those unfamiliar and uninitiated. This project was completed as part of my thesis work in the Media Design Program, a graduate studio at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. For more on my broader thesis work exploring the use of new media to make sense of a increasingly complex world, visit jdjarvis.com.

Astute, approachable, and just plain pretty animated explanation of our current economic situation. Oh, and did I mention INCREDIBLY FRIGHTENING!? Once you realize how simple, and thus fundamental, the underlying problems are, it becomes very difficult to believe in a quick or easy fix. Now, back to stuffing my remaining cash into my mattress...

long form documentary on the financial crisis. Audio editing/narrative is strong

waive

an interesting blog post on how banks set credit card limits

Today, we are bailing out the banks because of their greedy and deceptive lending practices in the mortgage industry. But this is just the tip of the iceberg. More is coming, I’m sorry to say. Layoffs are being announced nationwide in the tens of thousands. As people begin to lose their jobs, they will not be able to pay their credit card bills either. And the banks will be back for more handouts.

The Worst Is Yet To Come: Anonymous Banker Weighs In On The Coming Credit Card Debacle

Property values are down, times are tough, and the Wall Street Journal details how to use the current economic situation to significantly reduce your rent with this simple fill-in-the-blank letter to your landlord. Photo by Editor B. WSJ's Mary Pilon and her roommates were none too pleased to discover that their new neighbors had secured a lease for $300 less than their lease, while they received a $100/month hike in their rent. After sending the letter below to her landlord, Pilon shaved $300 off her rent.

Property values are down, times are tough, and the Wall Street Journal details how to use the current economic situation to significantly reduce your rent with this simple fill-in-the-blank letter to your landlord.

Sprekende foto's over de financiele crisis

Another great entry from The Big Picture. #30: Unused newspaper racks clutter a storage yard.

Iceland’s de facto bankruptcy—its currency (the krona) is kaput, its debt is 850 percent of G.D.P., its people are hoarding food and cash and blowing up their new Range Rovers for the insurance—resulted from a stunning collective madness. What led a tiny fishing nation, population 300,000, to decide, around 2003, to re-invent itself as a global financial power? In Reykjavík, where men are men, and the women seem to have completely given up on them, the author follows the peculiarly Icelandic logic behind the meltdown.

Iceland’s de facto bankruptcy—its currency (the krona) is kaput, its debt is 850 percent of G.D.P., its people are hoarding food and cash and blowing up their new Range Rovers for the insurance—resulted from a stunning collective madness. What led a tiny fishing nation, population 300,000, to decide, around 2003, to re-invent itself as a global financial power? In Reykjavík, where men are men, and the women seem to have completely given up on them, the author follows the peculiarly Icelandic logic behind the meltdown.

A beautiful piece by Michael Lewis about the Iceland economy which went bankrupt in 2008.

Important: worldwide scope.

Interesting take on social media marketing spend in downturn

Media Content for tutorial

The challenges facing Traditional and Online media

A great writeup on what's been going on with various media. Who will monetize the internet beyond advertising first?

There is no longer a need to warn of a gathering Chaos Scenario, in which the yin of media and yang of marketing fly apart, symbiotic no more. Doom has arrived.

Required reading

Mrs. Tyler

unemployment map of the USA

The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too. Annotated link http://www.diigo.com/bookmark/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonmonthly.com%2Ffeatures%2F2009%2F0903.galbraith.html

"Why the economic crisis, and its solution, are bigger than you think."

YES

What is fragile should break early while it is still small.

N.N. Taleb's ideas about how to avoid financial black swans in the future, based principally on greater regulation (regulating to help people from themselves)

"No incentives without disincentives: capitalism is about rewards and punishments, not just rewards."

Hiring is always hard. The hardest thing to do at a company is the recruiting and hiring. It was really hard when the economy was doing well. Paradoxically, for certain industries (especially those reliant on innovation such as those in the tech space), it's even harder when times are tough. That's right ... hiring in tough economic times can actually be much harder than when times are good. In a downturn, the amount of resumes from C-Players massively increases while the amount of resumes from A-Players probably remains the same.

"It's harder to hire great people in a tough economy"

Preciso ler assim que tiver tempo

Eric Hobsbawm: Whatever ideological logo we adopt, the shift from free market to public action needs to be bigger than politicians grasp

"Impotence therefore faces both those who believe in what amounts to a pure, stateless, market capitalism, a sort of international bourgeois anarchism, and those who believe in a planned socialism uncontaminated by private profit-seeking. Both are bankrupt. The future, like the present and the past, belongs to mixed economies in which public and private are braided together in one way or another. But how? That is the problem for everybody today, but especially for people on the left."

10 principles to rebuild on.

1. What is fragile should break early while it is still small. Nothing should ever become too big to fail. 2. No socialisation of losses & privatisation of gains. 3. People who were driving a school bus blindfolded (& crashed it) should never be given a new bus. 4. No incentives without disincentives: capitalism is about rewards and punishments, not just rewards. 5. Complexity from globalisation and highly networked economic life needs to be countered by simplicity in financial products. The complex economy is already a form of leverage: the leverage of efficiency. 6. Complex derivatives need to be banned because nobody understands them and few are rational enough to know it. 7. Governments should never need to “restore confidence”. 8. Using leverage to cure the problems of too much leverage is not homeopathy, it is denial. 9. Citizens should not depend on financial assets or fallible “expert” advice for their retirement. 10. we will have to remake the system before it does so itself"

Taleb k současné krizi

2. No socialisation of losses and privatisation of gains. Whatever may need to be bailed out should be nationalised; whatever does not need a bail-out should be free, small and risk-bearing. We have managed to combine the worst of capitalism and socialism. In France in the 1980s, the socialists took over the banks. In the US in the 2000s, the banks took over the government. This is surreal.

Clickable interactive map of Job gain and job loss across US across time.

By Chris Wilson (Slate Magazine): if you're morbidly interested, click-through; if you're the kind of person that cringes when you watch eye-ball surgery on the Health Channel... Well, maybe I can find a link to icanhazcheezburger around here somewhere...

With the right approach and resources, a downturn can actually provide real opportunities for a savvy marketer. We've compiled a list of recommended strategies and Google tools that can help you reveal opportunity and achieve your marketing goals. Even better? Many of these tools are free, so they can also help you do more with less.

us

Author of mortgage backed security software.

http://www.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&title=My+Manhattan+Project&expire=&urlID=35003522&fb=Y&url=http%3A%2F%2Fnymag.com%2Fnews%2Fbusiness%2F55687%2F&partnerID=73272--- manhanttan ManhattanProject

My Manhattan Project How I helped build the bomb that blew up Wall Street.

I have been called the devil by strangers and “the Facilitator” by friends. It’s not uncommon for people, when I tell them what I used to do, to ask if I feel guilty. I do, somewhat, and it nags at me. When I put it out of mind, it inevitably resurfaces, like a shipwreck at low tide. It’s been eight years since I compiled a program, but the last one lived on, becoming the industry standard that seeded itself into every investment bank in the world.

Animated map: net change in job numbers of the 100 largest metro areas from Jan 2004-Mar 2009. Data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Demographics

RT @ritubpant: The Geography of Jobs (Interactive Map) http://tr.im/jZRA Pls RT (via @zaibatsu) [from http://twitter.com/peterto/statuses/1647222071]

Statistics show hope: interesting as a visualization and as a prediction that the recovery is starting. I'll schedule a check up in six months

Fantastic illustration of business cycles

Brilliant interactive graphics on the economic cycle

Almost a year after A.I.G.’s collapse, despite a tidal wave of outrage, there still has been no clear explanation of what toppled the insurance giant. The author decides to ask the people involved—the silent, shell-shocked traders of the A.I.G. Financial Products unit—and finds that the story may have a villain, whose reign of terror over 400 employees brought the company, the U.S. economy, and the global financial system to their knees.

The author decides to ask the people involved—the silent, shell-shocked traders of the A.I.G. Financial Products unit—and finds that the story may have a villain, whose reign of terror over 400 employees brought the company, the U.S. economy, and the global financial system to their knees.

Great presentation - great ideas

It's not the bonuses. It's that AIG's counterparties are getting paid back in full.

What is the deeper relationship between Goldman and AIG? Didn't they almost merge a few years ago but did not because Goldman couldn't get its arms around the black box that is AIG? If that is true, why should Goldman get bailed out? After all, they should have known as well as anybody that a big part of AIG's business model was not to pay on insurance it had issued.

The Real AIG Scandal It's not the bonuses. It's that AIG's counterparties are getting paid back in full. By Eliot Spitzer

Everybody is rushing to condemn AIG's bonuses, but this simple scandal is obscuring the real disgrace at the insurance giant: Why are AIG's counterparties getting paid back in full, to the tune of tens of billions of taxpayer dollars?

"Here, on a sleepy stretch of shoreline at the far end of Asia, is surely the biggest and most secretive gathering of ships in maritime history. Their numbers are equivalent to the entire British and American navies combined; their tonnage is far greater. Container ships, bulk carriers, oil tankers - all should be steaming fully laden between China, Britain, Europe and the US, stocking camera shops, PC Worlds and Argos depots ahead of the retail pandemonium of 2009. But their water has been stolen. They are a powerful and tangible representation of the hurricanes that have been wrought by the global economic crisis; an iron curtain drawn along the coastline of the southern edge of Malaysia's rural Johor state, 50 miles east of Singapore harbour."

Content Type: text/html

recession effects

Good article from the Daily Fail shock!

save

"'Globalisation and shipping go hand in hand. Worldwide, we ship about 8.2 billion tons of cargo a year. That's more than one ton per person and probably two to three tons for richer people like us in the West. If the total goes down by five per cent or so, that's a lot of cargo that isn't moving.'" (Source: Daily Mail)

Snow crash is coming.

Sign of the recession anchored off Singapore

Incredible.

couple of years ago these ships would be steaming back and forth. Now 12 per cent are doing nothing

ghost fleet of the recession anchored just east of Singapore, Close to 500. An armada of freighters with no cargo, no crew. last year, an Aframax tanker capable of carrying 80,000 tons of cargo would cost £31,000 a day ($50,000). Now it is about £3,400 ($5,500)

California has the highest unemployment rate in the last 70 years

"Los Angeles, 2009: California may be the eighth largest economy in the world, but its state staff are being paid in IOUs, unemployment is at its highest in 70 years, and teachers are on hunger strike."

Los Angeles, 2009: California may be the eighth largest economy in the world, but its state staff are being paid in IOUs, unemployment is at its highest in 70 years, and teachers are on hunger strike. So what has gone so catastrophically wrong?

California may be the eighth largest economy in the world, but its state staff are being paid in IOUs, unemployment is at its highest in 70 years, and teachers are on hunger strike. So what has gone so…

California may be the eighth largest economy in the world, but its state staff are being paid in IOUs, unemployment is at its highest in 70 years, and teachers are on hunger strike. So what has gone so catastrophically wrong?

Since the Great Depression, presidents have frequently experimented with Keynesian economics to combat recessions. Three economists chronicle the history of government policy during past recessions and explain what worked and what didn’t.

Keynesian economics

A possible web page for International Finance of Princ of finance

really interesting interactive visualization of unemployment by race, gender, age, and education

Impresionante gráfica del NYTimes sobre el desempleo por grupos de población. Vía http://twitter.com/kikollan

Great infographic, great data

Unemployment rate data visualisation from NYTimes

Informative.

"Not all groups have felt the recession equally."

Amazing chart to play around with.

Interesting dataset, but the population of all possible combinations of settings as a backdrop is a weird choice. It does make it easier to explore, but I'm not sure about it. Might be nicer to just show settings you've tried and build it up over time so it feels more like you're discovering the trends yourself? Also wish there was more granularity, but I guess you take what you can get from the labor statistics people.

Interesting graphic from the NYT. Graphs usually bore me, but this is engaging and relevant. Nice, subtle use of animation and background to add context.

While the middle class has been caught in an economic vise, the financial industry that was supposed to serve them has prospered at their expense. Consumer banking -- selling debt to middle class families -- has been a gold mine. Boring banking has given way to creative banking, and the industry has generated tens of billions of dollars annually in fees made possible by deceptive and dangerous terms buried in the fine print of opaque, incomprehensible, and largely unregulated contracts. And when various forms of this creative banking triggered economic crisis, the banks went to Washington for a handout. All the while, top executives kept their jobs and retained their bonuses. Even though the tax dollars that supported the bailout came largely from middle class families -- from people already working hard to make ends meet -- the beneficiaries of those tax dollars are now lobbying Congress to preserve the rules that had let those huge banks feast off the middle class.

Today, one in five Americans is unemployed, underemployed or just plain out of work. One in nine families can't make the minimum payment on their credit cards. One in eight mortgages is in default or foreclosure. One in eight Americans is on food stamps. More than 120,000 families are filing for bankruptcy every month.

Can you imagine an America without a strong middle class? If you can, would it still be America as we know it?

it's time to steal from the rich

WSJ.com

Winds of change: Amid the economic downturn, there are fewer places in New York to plug in computers. As idle workers fill coffee-shop tables -- nursing a single cup, if that, and surfing the Web for hours -- and as shop owners struggle to stay in business, a decade-old love affair between coffee shops and laptop-wielding customers is fading.

Amid the economic downturn, there are fewer places in New York to plug in computers. As idle workers fill coffee-shop tables -- nursing a single cup, if that, and surfing the Web for hours -- and as shop owners struggle to stay in business, a decade-old love affair between coffee shops and laptop-wielding customers is fading.

RT @applicants: The Obama Economy http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123604419092515347.html [from http://twitter.com/Captoe/statuses/1276487461]

WSJ edit page fires a shot across Obama's bow.

As the Dow keeps dropping, the President is running out of people to blame.

financial crisis

Great article -- recommended by Jeremy Shapiro. One part of the argument: the fallacy of the belief in diversification and complexity.

Very interesting article about the causes of the current crisis.

By Jerry Z. Muller Thursday, January 29, 2009 Major recessions are characterized by something novel. Opacity and pseudo-objectivity created the crisis today.

It is with sad irony that the company which invented "planned obsolescence" -- the decision to build cars that would fall apart after a few years so that the customer would then have to buy a new one -- has now made itself obsolete

Don't put another $30 billion into the coffers of GM to build cars. Instead, use that money to keep the current workforce -- and most of those who have been laid off -- employed so that they can build the new modes of 21st century transportation. Let them start the conversion work now. Announce that we will have bullet trains criss-crossing this country in the next five years.

Beautiful and eloquent letter from Michael Moore, on the day of GM's "hand over" to its new shareholders: the US government and its taxpayers.

"Announce that we will have bullet trains criss-crossing this country in the next five years. Japan is celebrating the 45th anniversary of its first bullet train this year. Now they have dozens of them. Average speed: 165 mph. Average time a train is late: under 30 seconds. They have had these high speed trains for nearly five decades -- and we don't even have one! The fact that the technology already exists for us to go from New York to L.A. in 17 hours by train, and that we haven't used it, is criminal. Let's hire the unemployed to build the new high speed lines all over the country. Chicago to Detroit in less than two hours. Miami to DC in under 7 hours. Denver to Dallas in five and a half. This can be done and done now."

Michael Moore's suggestions as to what to do with GM seem good to me.

The Great Recession may be over, but this era of high joblessness is probably just beginning. Before it ends, it will likely change the life course and character of a generation of young adults. It will leave an indelible imprint on many blue-collar men. It could cripple marriage as an institution in many communities. It may already be plunging many inner cities into a despair not seen for decades. Ultimately, it is likely to warp our politics, our culture, and the character of our society for years to come.

The unfolding debt drama in Russia, Ukraine, and the EU states of Eastern Europe has reached acute danger point.

EMU - european monetary union

"There are accidents waiting to happen across the region, but the EU institutions don't have any framework for dealing with this. The day they decide not to save one of these one countries will be the trigger for a massive crisis with contagion spreading into the EU."

Brazil lost 650K jobs in 1 mo - Jan apparently??? how

For years Dr Doom toiled in relative obscurity as a NYU economics professor under his alias, Nouriel Roubini. But after making a series of uncannily accurate predictions about the global meltdown, Roubini has become the prophet of his age, jetting around the world dispensing his advice & latest prognostications to politicians & businessmen desperate to know what happens next – and for any answer to the crisis. Most other economists scoffed at Roubini & his predictions of imminent disaster. They dismissed his warnings that the sub-prime mortgage disaster would trigger a financial meltdown & that the investment banks would be crushed as the world headed for a long recession. Yet all these predictions & more came true. Few are laughing now.

Nouriel Roubini

a Cassandra

As stock markets headed off a cliff again last week, closely followed by currencies, and as meltdown threatened entire countries such as Hungary and Iceland, one voice was in demand above all others to steer us through the gloom: that of

WSJ article that has one part of the housing collapse that I hadn't heard before. Apparently inflation data that gets reported and looked at by the Fed and other regulators doesn't include home prices, it includes rental prices. Since the housing bubble was driven by mortgages, rents didn't spike nearly as much home prices. Had a truer picture of inflation been reflected in the numbers regulators been looking at the rate would have been double what was reported and likely regulators would have had to act in some way.

A great piece on the differences between the housing crash and the dot com bubble.

WSJ.com | Bubbles have been frequent in economic history - Steven Gjerstad and Vernon Smith explain why the housing crash ruined the financial system but the Dot-com collapse did not

fantastic wsj essay on formation of bubbles, experimental economics

How the New Deal actually corrected the economy and the myths used to argue that it did not.

Addresses the pervasive myth that FDR failed. That is, it's a "myth" for some definitions of "myth." As always, YMMV.

At such a moment, it is imperative to expose a dangerous popular myth regarding the efficacy of President Roosevelt’s actions: that it was not the programs of the New Deal, but only the placing of the nation on a wartime footing years later, that restored the health of the nation’s economy. This belief, though widely held, cannot stand up to even the most basic economic analysis. Yet the mainstream corporate media, which abound with anti-government ideology, seek to reinforce this myth. Just this past Sunday, The Washington Post featured on Page One of its Outlook section an article by Amity Shlaes headlined “FDR Was a Great Leader, But His Economic Plan Isn’t One to Follow.” Underscoring Shlaes’s made-up claims, the Post ran the continuation of her piece under the title: “FDR’s Plan Failed to Spark Real Growth.”

more on luxury or dearth of its necessity

Allison Arieff

Addressing other nations at the G-20 last Wednesday, President Obama suggested that the United States was unlikely to return to its role as a “voracious consumer market.” If Obama’s right — and the experience of Japan, post-recession, suggests he may well be — what might that mean for design?

The Economist

everyone seems to be viewing this as horrific, i don't see it. adjusting your economic approach to a given economy is inevitable, and prudent. am i missing something?

"Among the projects whose future is uncertain are Google Notebook, a site for storing and taking notes on Web pages, and Google Audio Indexing, which allows users to search for phrases within online video footage of politicians, say people familiar with the matter."

Google Notebook closes, though those with existing accounts can continue to save material.

Google shutting down services, the list

Anche dalle parti di Mountain View si vede la crisi, e cosa fanno le multinazionali in tempo di crisi? Tagliano prodotti e personale

Google's announced they're closing or ceasing development of a variety of products as part of an already continuing move to keep efforts focused on other

Let’s today step out of the normal boundaries of analysis of our economic crisis and ask a radical question: What if the crisis of 2008 represents something much more fundamental than a deep recession? What if it’s telling us that the whole growth model we created over the last 50 years is simply unsustainable economically and ecologically and that 2008 was when we hit the wall — when Mother Nature and the market both said: “No more.”

Friedman, Thomas L.. The Inflection Is Near?." New York Times 07 March 2009.

We must have growth, but we must grow in a different way. For starters, economies need to transition to the concept of net-zero, whereby buildings, cars, factories and homes are designed not only to generate as much energy as they use but to be infinitely recyclable in as many parts as possible. Let’s grow by creating flows rather than plundering more stocks.

“We created a way of raising standards of living that we can’t possibly pass on to our children,” said Joe Romm, a physicist and climate expert who writes the indispensable blog climateprogress.org. We have been getting rich by depleting all our natural stocks — water, hydrocarbons, forests, rivers, fish and arable land — and not by generating renewable flows. “You can get this burst of wealth that we have created from this rapacious behavior,” added Romm. “But it has to collapse, unless adults stand up and say, ‘This is a Ponzi scheme. We have not generated real wealth, and we are destroying a livable climate ...’ Real wealth is something you can pass on in a way that others can enjoy.”

m the things I’ve made for them,” Chen said. “And I also hear that, when they no longer want an item, they simply

The Inflection Is Near? By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN Sometimes the satirical newspaper The Onion is so right on, I can’t resist quoting from it.

Freidman,

working in the economic downturn , excellent article http://bit.ly/IbXh7 [from http://twitter.com/markedgington/statuses/1257829325]

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February 17, 2009 Filling Your Dance Card in Hard Economic Times by Pepi Ronalds

Boost Your Resume and Reputation During the Recession | Best Universities

good list of useful 3rd party apps

Starting a business isn't as crazy and risky as they say - Blog -

Startups, small business, marketing, and useful geekery from someone who's been there: Jason Cohen, founder of Smart Bear Software

Mon Feb 09, 2009 at 08:58:22 PM PDT According to Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D) (PA-11), in mid-September of 2008, the United States of America came just three hours away from the collapse of the entire economy. In a span of 2 hours, $550 billion was drawn out of money market accounts in an electronic run on the banks.

Nevermind, this is apparently false. http://www.portfolio.com/views/blogs/market-movers/2009/02/11/kanjorski-and-the-money-market-funds-the-facts

Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D PA-11)

According to Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D) (PA-11), in mid-September of 2008, the United States of America came just three hours away from the collapse of the entire economy. In a span of 2 hours, $550 billion was drawn out of money market accounts in an electronic run on the banks. Rep. Kanjorski: "It would have been the end of our economic system and our political system as we know it."

Interactive visualization from the NY Times

enter a word - track reader responses over time

The word train on the financial crisis

Note, you don’t want to hire most of those laid off. Most permanent Googlers were “managing” projects (e.g, taking 4 day weekends and showing up to work only to eat the free food and showed up barely to 1 or 2 meetings per week). The temps that were there for more than a year learned the same laziness and worthless work ethic. If you’re looking for people with no real experience and who think it’s okay to steal a tray of bottle water provided by the company for everyone to drink… then go ahead and hire a Googler. Otherwise, be really careful and interview really in-depth about what they can and cannot do (and verify it).

Google has been quietly laying off staff and up to 10,000 jobs could be on the chopping block according to sources. Since August, hundreds of employees have been laid off and there are reports that about 500 of them were recruiters for Google. By law, Google is required to report layoffs publicly and with the SEC however, Google has managed to get around the legal requirement. In fact, one of the ways Google was able to meet Wall Street’s Q3 earnings expectations was by trimming “operational” expenses. Google reports to the SEC that it has 20,123 employees but in reality it has 30,000. Why the discrepancy? Google classifies 10,000 of the employees as temporary operational expenses or “workers”. Google co-founder Sergey Brin said, “There is no question that the number (of workers) is too high”. There is no question the economic downturn is hitting Google hard and with the slowdown in online advertising, their troubles are just beginning.

Google has been quietly laying off staff and up to 10,000 jobs could be on the chopping block according to sources.