Be Nice to Rich People

Paul Krugman blogged about the “paradox of thrift” for the New York Times this morning. Basically, people are cutting spending, which negatively affects the economy, which results in more job losses, which causes people to pull back on spending, and so on…

Funnily enough, yesterday a friend who has a designer retail business was lamenting the trend of lambasting the rich for shopping.

Con Ed’s Customer Satisfaction Plan

Attention New Yorkers: Con Edison does not care about making any more money off of you.

At the Future of New York City conference today, several business leaders held forth on the future of business in the recession. Jamie Dimon took issue with the pervasive view that Wall Street compensation should be purely performance-based, saying that some jobs were tough enough without performance-comp pressures. NASDAQ’s Robert Greifeld asserted that over-the-counter derivatives market could be the next area of growth. And Con Ed CEO Kevin Burke, speaking to WNYC host Brian Lehrer from the conference, said the utility giant planned to stop growing its business.

5 Bubbles Waiting to Pop (Including My Apartment)

Welcome to the Bubblesphere, ’09. Remember the signs? Irrational exuberance. Excessive risk-taking. You’d think we’d learn our lesson, but it’s tricky to see a bubble until it pops. Nobody has a crystal ball, but there are indications that these five potential bubbles may soon deflate in dramatic fashion.

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.

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.

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.”

Caffeinated Closures

Attention employment-challenged workers: Your workspace options have just been reduced. With its fiscal first-quarter earnings today, Starbucks announced that it would be cutting 6,700 jobs

Read more…

Screwed: 8,000 at Sprint Nextel

A daily review of the employment fallout around the country.

Sprint Nextel plans to cut 8,000 jobs in the first quarter, or about 14 percent of its work force…Corning is slashing 3,500 positions…Philips Electronics is eliminating 6,000 jobs this year after swinging to its first quarterly loss in five years…IBM is cutting 2,800 jobs in sales, software units…Fox Interactive Media is laying off about 100 people…Reed Business Information sacked 7 percent of its work force.

Read about layoffs at the sites compiled on our Layoff Tracker page.

Recession Briefing: 1.26

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

News
Recession Warrior?
Tim Geithner is expected to be confirmed today as Treasury Secretary — and architect of the way out of the downturn. [CNN Money]

The Quitter Economy
Slate says the waning of American confidence will be a mighty hurdle in President Obama’s aim to fix the economy. [Slate]

U.S. Bank?
Obama needs to fix the banking system, which remains broken despite infusions of cash. One sensitive option being considered: nationalization, which might be the only way to return any benefits of the bailouts to citizens. [NYTimes]