Redux: Will the Recession Spark a Music Revolution?

Little known fact: Many of America’s quintessential cultural elements – the hamburger, the hotdog, Hollywood, baseball, horse-racing and rock-and-roll, to name a few – can be traced to Great Depression. We’ve been shocked into recalling that financial markets feature cycles of contraction and expansion. But culture does, too. Oddly, these cycles appear to be inverted. When the market contracts, culture seems to expand. Innovators emerge, values shift, and tastes change. People begin to play outside the box.

Recession Lexicon: Pre-Fired

We have plenty of synonyms for losing one’s job: laid off, fired, canned, made redundant, eliminated, dismissed, pink-slipped, discharged, and my personal favorite from a friend: “squirted out of the company.”

But new times demand new words, to describe concepts and situations we’ve never encountered before—like losing your job before you’ve even started it.

Retooling: “Hibernate” Your Business

For a lot of companies, it’s going to be a long, cold winter — even as that winter turns to spring, summer, fall and back again. Instead of toughing it out with bridge-loan band-aids, fancy resource footwork or repeated promises to customers, one company bowed out without bowing out. In the CEO’s term, it went into “hibernation.”

In a story by Rafe Needleman on Cnet, Big Moving Picture CEO David Knight laid out his predicament and his strategy: His company, which affixes cameras to military aircraft during air shows and displays the live feed on large screens to audiences on the ground, was about to launch last fall. When the market fell precipitously in September, he put things on hold.

Love in the Time of Layoff: Honey, They Shrunk My Job

Ten in the morning and the phone rings. Marco’s voice sounds wrong. “Are you ok?” I ask. “Not really,” he says. And in the next breath, he shares the news. “I just got laid off.”

Silence on my end. Shock, dread, then sudden relief. At least he hasn’t been hurt, or told me that someone died. But wait—this is really, really bad news. Laid off. Laid off. What kind of phrase is that anyway? How are we going to make it on just my freelance income? How will we buy that stroller for the as-yet nonexistent kid we’ve been trying to have? Does this mean I have to learn to cook? Mortgage payments. Utility bills. All I can muster is a lame “Oh. My. God.” And later, “I love you.”

Digital TV Hits a Recession Hurdle

Let’s just bring out this unpopular view right now: We don’t think the digital TV switch delay from February 17 to June 12 is a good idea for anybody. Especially consumers.

Here’s why: right now, digital televisions (the only kind they make now) are selling for all-time lows. Flat-panels have dropped to as low as $400 for 32 inches and smaller, sometimes as low as $300 or less for lower-end brands.

The Book Reporter: Crash Proof

Peter D. Schiff deserves a gold medal, while most of us deserve a dunce cap. Schiff, an economic commentator and stockbroker, was once dubbed “Mr. Doom” and “Chicken Little” by the media for his dire warnings about the real estate bubble and the shaky state of the American economy.

I’m Not Jobless, I’m…

…a banker/lawyer/retail executive/IT specialist/journalist/analyst who would rather not admit that I’ve been shit-canned. Some euphemisms that have been making the rounds at New York parties:

Nearly Free Art

Many of us are spending more time in our homes just as we have less to spend on our homes. Happily, there are creative ways to spiff up your walls without breaking out the college posters. Here, four works of art that practically cost pennies.

Recession Briefing 1.30

What you need to know today to survive and thrive in the recession.

Obama Calls Wall Street Bonuses ‘Shameful’ (NY Times)
“There will be time for them to make profits, and there will be time for them to get bonuses,” he said during an appearance in the Oval Office. “Now’s not that time.”

Screwed: 20,000 at NEC

Japanese electronics giant NEC Corp. will cut 20,000 workers worldwide…with sales down 24%, Eastman Kodak said it plans for 3,500 to 4,500 more layoffs…