I can’t help but listen to NPR, various TV pundits, and every random idiot on the street who has an opinion about our failing economy and think that they are all full of shit. Ok, so tv pundits being full of shit is fairly obvious, but no one seems to have a clear understanding of what’s going on enough that they can predict what’s going to happen next.
I will now attempt to leverage my psychic abilities to predict the future of our economy, and along the way provide some insight about how we got here. *(Hint, I will not be speaking of bad mortgages and stupid banking practices because I think everyone now understands that stupidity.)
First, look at who is struggling:
Circuit City - Cut out qualified, tenured employees and hired less qualified apathetic drones to not give a shit about customers for less pay. Right. And they closed. This has nothing to do with bad mortgages.
Brokerages - So let me get this straight. Less regulatory oversight allowed brokers to turn Wall Street into a massive ponzi scheme with their investors money and 401Ks. This. Failed. In. The. 1980s. Idiots.
Compusa - Let’s not forget one of the first victims. Compusa was a total predictor of Americans running out of patience for poorly run big box retailers. News flash big box retailers, US consumers have lost patience in being manipulated, lied to, and treated like crap. Compusa and Circuit City were 2 of the worst practitioners in this area and deserved a terrible death.
Real Estate - LOL. Seriously. What more needs to be said? You can’t keep building forever and pushing up prices indefinitely. This is what happens when you let anyone be a real estate agent or mortgage broker and they end up treating the entire US housing market like a massive land grab. Bad deals, inflated prices, and record foreclosures.
Detroit - Ok, one more time Detroit. MOVE FASTER. People get sick of boring cars and bad gas mileage. Everyone BUT YOU has figured out that your cars look fucking gay and wear out too fast. And seriously, if you’re going to bank your entire business strategy on making bigger, fatter vehicles while gas prices continue to climb and instability in oil rich regions gets shakier by the day. You deserve a big fat failure.
Employees - You idiots. The world cannot sustain less than 5% unemployment because from my experience 6-8% of the US is unemployable. That means you, everyone that worked at Circuit City and Compusa. And hey morons in manufacturing - you know how your unions keep pushing up your wages and benefits? Yeah, that is called reducing profits are making American manufacturing less competitive. That means eventually, your greed will eliminate your job altogether. It reminds me of that stupid childrens fable about the dog with the steak seeing his reflection and dropping his steak and having nothing….ah, forget it. You’d better start going back to school or learning the culture in 3rd world countries because that’s who’s going to have your job in the next 5 years.
Look around folks. This isn’t a massive economic collapse the likes of which haven’t been seen since the great depression. People are still lining up for iPhones and Nintendos. This is about consumers right sizing the market. You want to make a profit - make better shit for people to buy. We don’t need 900 different brands of soap. We don’t need 5 different retailers selling the same shit +/- $.05. I’m not going to drive a mile to save a nickel and your employees are retarded. In this regard, republicans have it right - the market is a powerful force and if companies don’t keep up they should be allowed to fail on their own. That being said, no one ever considered the long term effects of having a decade of 3-4% unemployment.
Americans are staging the worlds first complete reset of both the economic and political system. They may not realize it, but look at the record fund raising by Barack Obama. Americans still buy innovation. Americans will still buy what they need. Companies thought that the pockets where bottomless pits of cash, and they are not. This is just consumers right-sizing the products and services they buy on a massive scale because now that the housing market has stabilized and the ridiculous equity payouts are gone, everything is just getting back to normal and normal people don’t need 4 65″ plasma tvs and 1 more American made truck that gets 10 mpg.
Apple, that goes for you too. There is not an infinite need for music players and laptops and if you make shitty products your consumers will leave you too. But I love my new iPhone, so thanks and keep up the good work.
I’m out bitches. What was the last thing you bought?
Best Buy sells everything at a competitive price and Amazon had a record Q4 in 2008.