Economy 2.0

Dire predictions from The Times:

“These jobs aren’t coming back,” said John E. Silvia, chief economist at Wachovia in Charlotte, N.C. “A lot of production either isn’t going to happen at all, or it’s going to happen somewhere other than the United States. There are going to be fewer stores, fewer factories, fewer financial services operations. Firms are making strategic decisions that they don’t want to be in their businesses.”

Now, it’s easy to dismiss this because it comes from the mouth of someone that was involved in advising top levels of the most decimated industry in America. On the other hand, most of the greed that fueled it was lead by the typical Dilbert management and marketing characters.

I for one agree with him in the short term. As do the markets, as do politicians, as do the banks as do the foreign markets.

We’re now where we were at 10 years ago, financially, as a country. So were the years of Clinton and Bush (prior to bombing the wrong country) a lie? Not at all. Look at our little scope of IT. We built all these things at an enormous cost because there was no alternative. No broadband. Today we can do a lot for a lot less, remotely, which is why our business is growing.

But what if your primary business was making high end laptops? Not a good time.

This is a great lesson to learn. In order for your business to grow it needs to change.

Will soon come a day where Hosted Exchange and ExchangeDefender are not as hot? When we’ll be running at the fraction of employees? I don’t doubt it at all. Gotta keep on innovating if you want to stay around.

Not doom and gloom, just reality.