Apr 20, 2009 at 12:00
There is absolutely no need for me to have to tell any reader that times are tough. If you still have a job you are probably being forced to take a certain number of forced vacation days a quarter; you are maybe being told that you just need to stay at home and not get paid for a certain number of days a month. But the workload doesn’t go away, and when you get back to your desk from those forced absences, you are probably working even longer hours than usual just to get your feet back underneath yourself.
You are doing this with a strange feeling of gratitude, no doubt, because these management dictates also mean that, for the moment, you get to keep your job, your health benefits, your stock options, and your ability to keep hoping for the future.
And things are probably turning the corner. There is an electronic life out there, it seems, with a heart that is beating at least ten percent faster than it was three months ago. My feeling today is that we are going to recognize a real turnaround in our industry by September 2009, and maybe even sooner in some sectors.
Those of us who are still standing at that time are going to benefit from the new order that we will be experiencing; there will be different attitudes and a completely different climate for having been through the experience of this last long year.
Yet, I fear for the world. Because although micro-economies, like electronics, will heal and do well in the next few years, there is no indication of jobs returning to the bulk of the nation. The jobless numbers increase, although the rate-of-change may have slowed down somewhat. What are all these people going to do with themselves and for themselves?
Unemployment benefits don’t last forever, although, no doubt, an Obama administration will extend them where they can – assuming all State Governors accept that assistance! But even then there have to be limits.
The majority of permanent job losses are going to be in manufacturing. Although free trade agreements sound wonderful in the abstract, they will always have the effect of moving jobs to the lowest cost basis that is available at the time: and that is not going to be in North America. John McCain might think you can get paid $50+ an hour for picking lettuce in Arizona, but even the actual cost is still a lot higher than if you were picking that lettuce outside Mexico City.
I remember years ago when I had a distributor with offices in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taipei and they told tales about “suitcase traders.” No, these weren’t people who sold luggage. But they were people who moved around with a lot of cash in their possession and they bought a lot of consumer products, in very large quantities. In one of those three cities, at any one point in time, what they wanted to buy would be cheaper than in the other two – and that is where they took their business. I bought my Pentax camera at a wholesale price that you would probably find astonishing (and no it’s not a fake!)
The same has to be true of all the manufacturing business that has moved out of North America to that "cheapest location," now probably divided between India, China, and Taiwan, with a little bit of Indonesia thrown in.
We can all do little things. Only buying North-American-made would be a dramatic statement, but may not be practical any more. We could excuse ourselves from buying a GM vehicle, for example, by buying a North American assembled Japanese vehicle. But note that “assembled,” rather than built. The truth is that if you track the parts being used in such vehicles, not many stop completely at North American sources. If you buy North American assembled Japanese you are supporting Japan. The same is true of the German marques. When (if?) Chrysler starts building Fiats for the North American market, will it be the same thing?
I worry about the poorly educated, wage earning Americans who have been displaced and continue to be displaced. Can you see a future for them? The Great Depression only really ended with the US gearing up to supplying weapons and other military materiel to the Allies in WWII, and then with the direct involvement in that war after Pearl Harbor, with the deaths of so many. It also truly, and rightly, brought women into the workplace.
Tell me that war is not how this present crisis will completely end.
Posted in acquisitionZONE
