I e-mailed a guy I know and received the following "out of office" reply: "On October 30, 2008 Verizon tapped me on the shoulder with the Reduction In Force package. Hence, I am no longer in the office. If you need to contact me you have my number. It has been a pleasure working with you. Maybe our paths will cross again!"
I guess I'll have to call the guy on his cell phone, assuming he still has one.
Next night, I bumped into another guy I hadn't seen in a while. We talked about our kids for a minute, and then he said he'd just lost his job. Company folded. He was sullen, as you might expect, looking more than a little worried at the age of 50-something and jobless.
Of course, I should not have been surprised to learn that two guys I know, well-established in the middle class, had lost their jobs. The Labor Department reported last week that the number of Americans collecting jobless benefits has hit a 26-year high.
In Maryland, the governor plans to furlough thousands of state workers to make up for huge revenue losses and a budget gap. Constellation Energy Group announced layoffs of 800 workers. My phone at The Baltimore Sun rings every day with calls from ex-offenders looking for work. They had a tough time finding jobs when the economy was relatively good; imagine how hard it is for them now.
Where is all this going?
We don't know. Even after the best and the brightest are assembled in the new Obama administration, we may not climb out of this mess for a long time.
I never saw how our consumer-dominated economy could last. I never saw how we could keep going on as a debtor nation without some huge, painful consequence.
Here's the kind of line from a news story (off Bloomberg.com) that always gives me pause: "AT&T Inc., DuPont Co. and Viacom Inc. plan to eliminate more than 15,000 jobs as consumer spending falters." There's that phrase again: consumer spending.
You know why I think Congress should extend $34 billion in loans to the Big Three automakers? They employ people who make something. They make cars and trucks and minivans. They could probably make better ones, and electric ones. But in that GM, Ford and Chrysler represent an shrinking part of the American economy that involves manufacturing - making something somebody somewhere wants - I think we should give it a boost.
But a stimulus package to spur more consumer spending? No thanks. How you can stimulate an economy that has essentially collapsed?
