It's All About the Benjamins, Baby.

Ok, that tears it.

The American economy appears to be controlled primarily by investors with the collective intelligence of a fermented rutabaga.

Let’s think about this for a micro-second, and see just how this situation arose. Oh wait, there’s no thinking necessary; it’s pure, unadulterated greed. Greed that makes the more shady investors give money to businesses with questionable business plans, little marketability, and a tendency to over spend and overestimate growth potential in their sectors. Greed that fueled outrageously inflated IPOs - even for companies with no infrastructure who only seemed to exist on paper.

When investors finally woke up one morning after their crack had worn off, they suddenly realized that most dotcoms were run by charismatic 3-year-olds, each of which owned a Dodge Viper for every day of the week. This waste of money made investors angry and confused. Angry that the company they spent so much money to support was still millions in the red, and confused trying to figure out what particular brand of narcotic was coursing through their veins to cause the required lapse in judgment necessary for such an investment to occur.

After swearing off all future mood-altering substances, investors appeared to completely withdraw from the tech sector. All of the tech sector. Not just the dotcoms, not just the smoke and mirrors businesses, all of it. The tech crash was at hand, and woe onto those who thought it would stop there.

No. You see, good tech companies exist too. Oracle, Cisco, and Motorola are examples of companies who have been otherwise slapped down with the rest of the other unprofitable crap. It seems that withdrawal had made investors paranoid and rather stupid. So of course, since many large tech companies had CEO pockets to line, they started laying off employees by the thousand.

This was what started it all. For you see, if one company has layoffs, it’s not a big deal. Other industries will absorb the employees of said faltering company. But when an entire industry lays off employees on a wholesale basis, there is no other recourse but to continue the layoffs across the board.

About when this started to happen, other companies started reporting lower expected earnings in the coming quarters. Coincidence? I doubt it. If too many companies lay off too many employees, there is no way the rest of the industry can absorb the glut. This means less money circulating in the economy, and less expected revenues for everyone else. People don’t want to buy luxury items when they’ve been laid off; most actually desire to consume food and not live on the street.

Oops… indiscriminately slaughtering the tech sector seems to have hurt all the other industries in a rather gruesome chain-reaction of layoffs and low earning reports. Well damn, I sure as hell didn’t see that coming about five solar systems away. And of course while all of this is happening, the investor panic grows exponentially resulting in less investing across all sectors.

See a pattern here? There is no economy downturn. We’re causing an economic downturn because the general populace is composed of easily frightened chihuahua’s who’ve accidently consumed an entire bottle of No-Doz, and somebody has just popped a balloon five feet away.

Know how to stop this?

* 
Tell the fscking investors to be more patient with earnings
reports.  Christ.  Lower earnings do not mean the company
will suddenly go out of business tomorrow.  The dotcoms that
were going to fail already have.  You can relax now, guys.

* 
Stop laying off your employees, you ignorant pieces of camel
feces!
That tells the investors you are having money problems, which
scares the little bastards, giving you less money, and making
things worse.  Not only that, but those employees will never
come back, and may even boycott you for being so mind-numbingly
stupid.  Even pimps know that their stable of pregnant
crack-whores is necessary for business.  Less employees = less
product = less business = oh shit, we're fucked.

* 
Invest now, you testicle chewing monkey sphincters!  All stocks
are disgustingly low right now!  When they go back up, you'll
all be fucking millionaires!  For God's sake, don't panic and
sell all of your stocks at a loss!  What are you, some kind of
poster child for "Flushing Your Money Down The Toilet" magazine?

This is common sense, for crying out loud!

Crimany. If this garbage continues, I’m moving to a more economically stable country like Russia, or one of its financially crushed and politically corrupt splinters.