How I Imagine My Hypothetical Average Workday, by Decade(s)

My parents always say things like “back in my day…the world was a better place” or “back in my day…we didn’t need e-mail to have a good time.” Here’s how I see it:

The Fifties
I get out of bed and put my slippers on. Everything is in grayscale. My wife has prepared a beautiful smorgasbord of scrambled eggs, bacon, toast and cereal flakes. My blond son, Timmy, and my blonde daughter, Diane, both tell me how they are so proud of their father. I smile and one of my front teeth literally sparkles. We all giggle. The golden retriever giggles too. I tell Timmy he had better eat his cereal flakes if he wants to get big and mighty like Hank Aaron. We all pray to family values and thank God we don’t live in Russia.

When I get into work, my secretary compliments me on my clean and neat haircut. She gives me many reports I won’t read. I drink three glasses of scotch, smoke a pack of cigarettes, have conversations that might seem racially insensitive with today’s standards and eventually end up at a meeting in which we are told the company is growing at an outstanding rate…

This Time Isn’t Different

People from Wall Street to Main Street were caught off-guard as Lehman Brothers fell and the rest of the financial system seemed to be on the verge of collapse. But according to Carmen Reinhart, Professor of Economics at the University of Maryland and co-author of This Time is Different, global financial crises have followed a predictable pattern for centuries—and policy-makers and regulators should have seen this coming. Here is what she had to say about the state of our economy, the contributing causes of financial crises, and what we can do to help prevent them in the future.

Recessionwire: The recession has been declared officially over, but what does that mean for Main Street? How long can we expect the impacts of this recession to last on banking, credit, home ownership, loans and the job market?

Reinhart: In terms of the business cycle, we have either just bottomed or are bottoming right now…

Downturn Designers

This economic rough patch has not been kind to clothing. It’s become the norm for retailers to offer 70 percent off. Fashion brands from Christian Lacroix to Hartmarx to Kira Plastinina have filed for bankruptcy. (Though it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that a line by a 16-year-old Russian heiress would last less than a year.) Haute couture houses are struggling to survive.

Yet in last week’s New York Times, designer Diane von Furstenberg, who also heads the Council of Fashion Designers of America, advised “confidence.”

“Everyone else is insecure,” she said. “If you start to take a little bit of everyone else’s insecurity—forget it.” (And btw, you were all spending too much during the boom.)

Sure, DVF has an uber-successful fashion company and a billionaire husband. But does she also have a point? Von Furstenberg debuted her namesake brand in 1973, smack in the middle of a major recession. In fact, some of the most popular and respected designers and innovative materials have emerged in downturns—just further evidence that creativity can flourish in recession, and success can take root in hard times…