Tougher Times Ahead

[Ghosti]

I feel for ya Dags.

The company I work for were managing the Porsche Carrera Cup championship until recently but unfortunately due to only 7 teams being able to commit to a full year's racing (bugger all sponsorship $$ around) Porsche have had to shut the doors on the whole comp.

We've had to lay off 5 people who were directly involved in the motor racing side of the company as a result.

One chick who uprooted herself from QLD to work on the series, one guy who was the bosses close personal friend and one guy had only been working for us for 3 DAYS!

They had to take the poor bastard's pay details so they could pay him out!

Sad times.

[Flukey]

Sorry to hear about your situation Dags. I have my fingers crossed mate that you will be OK.

I listened to the Reserve Bank Governer last night and the outlook here looks mildly opptimistic. His thoughts were echoed by Mike Smith who heads up ANZ so it may not get as bad here as it has overseas. My industry is still relatively bouyant, although we are being ultra conservative with spend and recruiting.

From what I hear/read, those affected seem to come from national employers, those that trade with national employers or exporters.

When the rest of the world is pretty much in recession, those that rely on trade or manufacturing feel it first.

[Mat]

So dags how do you do it. I bet its the hardest job telling someone that they have to go

Its hard but at the same time, you gotta look after yourself / your job first. You think employees look after bosses first

Sent one girl packing on a friday arvo (few months back now) and she begged me to finish the weekend off as she needed the money. She put in a stella 2 days work. Felt a bit bad that week lol

At the same time, firing people who are genuine drop kicks is a great feeling!

My mate lost his job the other week (but the tightass has almost 100K cash saved up on a 45k p/a job) and the boss simply told them it was too hard to choose so he pulled 3 names out of a hat. Only 4 people work with him.. They kinda knew a few weeks ago after going part time etc

[hypnodoc]

I listened to the Reserve Bank Governer last night and the outlook here looks mildly opptimistic. His thoughts were echoed by Mike Smith who heads up ANZ so it may not get as bad here as it has overseas. My industry is still relatively bouyant.

Yeah and the Tooth Fairy is alive and well to . These are the same people who 3 months ago were telling us we won't be that affected. I wonder how Mike Smith would answer if the media bothered to question him about the 1.4 trillion in deriviatives that the ANZ owes. They feed the public on any that's convienient at the time, and then feed some more when the future reveals they were wrong.

The only way to properly judge any economy is to remove the emotive speculation and look at the Mathematical equation, the reality of the balance sheet, and the mathematical equation of all nations, and especially the Global economy isn't looking too good at the moment.

There will always be work and money to be made, even in the highly unlikely event that unemployment went to 25%, it still means we have 75% employment so the world isn't going to end, but it will get much worse than the so called late 80s, early 90 depression simply because debt levels are much higher. Just stay out debt and hang onto your job, for every person losing their job there are hundreds who aren't and won't.

[ronburgundy]

We're in the same boat Dags - we got rid of 10 people out of 100 (including my mum who I'd got an admin job for about 3 years ago that they no longer needed - a whole nother story ). 3 months on she still hasn't found a job and used most of her pay out to pay off some debt. Centrelink don't care about that; they figure she got a pay out of X amount, her living expenses are estimated at X per week, so they're not gonna pay her for X number of weeks.

There are sooooo many people that I would have got rid of but some of them have been there over 7 years; and so when you have to factor in the additional COST of getting rid of these people as part of a COST-CUTTING exercise... well, sadly it is a no brainer. It's a very short-term view but sadly that's what we're reduced to because at the moment it is hard to look beyond the short-term.

I've heard of some of the larger (second-tier and Big 4) accounting firms have already (in mid-Jan actually) EMAILED their staff to say there would be no payrises this year unless they were getting promoted. I was gonna discuss it with one of the partners at work just to make conversation but then decided best to avoid putting ideas in his head!

[hypnodoc]

As offically desginated "Recession Stooge", soon I may be the Depression Stooge. Heres some more cheerful news that arrived in the inbox this morning.

Red Alert: Major Meltdown Imminent!

by Martin D. Weiss, Ph.D.

The nation's largest banks are so close to collapse and the world economy is coming unglued so rapidly, a major Wall Street meltdown is now imminent.

Specifically, it's now increasingly likely that virtually all of our forecasts of recent months could come to pass in a very short period of time, including ...

• Stock market crash: A swift plunge in stocks to about 5000 on the Dow, 500 on the S&P 500 and 900 on the Nasdaq ... or lower.

• Corporate bankruptcies: A chain reaction of Chapter 11 filings or federal takeovers, including not only General Motors and Chrysler, but also Ann Taylor, Best Buy, Jet Blue, Macy's, Saks Fifth Avenue, Sears, Toys "R" Us, you.S. Airways and even giants like Ford or General Electric.

• Megabank failures: Bankruptcies or nationalization not only of Citigroup and Bank of America, but also JPMorgan Chase and HSBC.

• Nationwide epidemic of small and medium-sized bank failures: Outright FDIC takeovers, with little prospect of nationalization.

• Insurance failures: State takeovers of companies like Ambac Assurance, Bankers Life and Casualty, Conseco, FGIC, Medical Liability Mutual, Mortgage Guaranty Insurance, Nuclear Electric Insurance, PMI Mortgage, Standard Life of Indiana and many others.

• Cities and states: An epidemic of defaults by thousands of cities, states and other issuers of tax-exempt municipal bonds.

• Stock market shutdowns: Trading halts on major, big-cap stocks ... plus on-again, off-again exchange shutdowns, making it increasingly difficult for investors to liquidate their holdings at any price.

• Credit market deep freeze: A virtual shutdown in all debt markets except you.S. Treasuries. An avalanche of selling — and virtually no buyers — for corporate bonds, commercial paper, asset-backed securities, municipal bonds and all forms of bank loans.

• Government bond collapse: A steep decline in the price of medium-and long-term government securities, as the you.S. Treasury bids aggressively for scarce funds to finance a ballooning budget deficit.

Shocking? Perhaps. Avoidable? No.

Nor am I alone in anticipating this rapid unravelling of the economy and financial markets. This past Friday, at a Columbia University dinner

• George Soros said the financial system has effectively disintegrated, with the turbulence more severe than during the Great Depression and with the decline comparable to the fall of the Soviet Union, while ...

• Paul Volcker said he could not remember any time, even in the Great Depression, when things went down so fast and quite so uniformly around the world.

Both recognize that we're in a new era of chaos. What's the landmark event that separates us from the past era of relative stability?

According to Soros, it's debt and the quietly festering derivatives bubble. That is the final straw that is puncturing the already imploding bubble. And it was the first major domino that set off the chain reaction of events now careening out of control: The collapse of consumer credit markets ... surging unemployment ... and now, a new set of even larger financial failures looming.

[Dagabond]

Glad you posted that Doc I was closing to taking the title off you...

It's like the fckin retards just cant be bothered turning it round all they can do is talk each other deeper and deeper into it...

Fck 'Them'...

[hypnodoc]

It pays to Stay Informed, but its all happened before, and a valley can only descend so far down, swimming across the river at the bottom is the hard part.

[yw84u]

I am in a bit of a predicament myself. I own a concrete truck and while we are still making good money it has slowed a bit, but I am thinking of buying a new truck as the price of trucks now are absolutely rock bottom and still coming down and with the governments 30% extra depreciation claim I will be saving about $50 to $80k in the long run if I buy now v buying latter. So I don't know hold on to my truck I have, which is a great truck nothing wrong with it or get a new bigger truck (I have a 6x4 which can carry 5.8m3, going up to a 8x4 which can carry 7.4m3). But the downer is I have to order before the 30 June so I don't know what to do as the new truck will cost more to run so if the work stops I wont be better off at all

Edited 24/02/09 07:08 AM by Dagabond

[jimmy1234]

I listened to the Reserve Bank Governer last night and the outlook here looks mildly opptimistic. His thoughts were echoed by Mike Smith who heads up ANZ so it may not get as bad here as it has overseas.

Funny you say that, I was in PNG late last year and they had some big-wigs from ANZ giving a talk on the global economic forecasts ect.... They were focused on how bad it is going to get....2% interest rate were predicted...I sort of tuned out to it all as my hang over was yelling at me a lot louder then they were speaking.