Prepared for the Post Recession?

This may be a simplistic viewpoint from someone with a very small business, but I would think that the the best strategy for being prepared for the rebound is to still be in business. Although if you have cash, now is a great time to buy equipment.

Yes it the great time to buy, A machine salesman friend of mine is selling high end machine tools at 30 -50 % off. But he said nobody is buying. Where the good financing deals when you need it.

Jim C

Gee, the next article was talking about CFOs cutting positions right through 2009. Quite a rebound.

I would say from past experience that most manufacturers will miss the bottom and will be losing momentum on the upswing before they act, playing catch-up football until the next down turn.

It would be real interesting to know where the author thinks demand is going to be generated from to justify the rebound. The credit necessary to pull forward demand is unavailable. Stimulus or no stimulus, we're losing jobs faster than we can create them, so there may be some instances of individual demand going up, but in the aggregate, not a chance.

"Half measures, and uncoordinated strategies coupled with endemic toleration of corruptions will insure dramatic catastrophes sadly predicted and understood by many as more than likely."

Totally true. GA.

I Like that one too. It reminds me of another quote I saw on a poster long ago:

We the willing, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much for so long with so little, we are now qualified to do anything with nothing.

Sort of sounds like a job description for an engineer.

I agree with your comment about the manufacturing base.

This whole thing reminds me of the childrens story of the "Little Red Hen". I think of the little red hen as representing our manufacturing base. When we kill the little red hen there will be no one to bake the bread.

The politicians and, if you go by the election results, the majority of the public fail to understand that if you tax big business out of existence there will be no one to provide jobs and no one to tax.

Even scarier if you think about it is that every war in history was won first in the factory long before it was won on the battlefield. We are ignorantly making our nation very vulnerable.

I wonder who is predicting the economic turnaround. Here in the Peoples Republic of Arnold things are not good. Iou's, a governing body that wants to tax and destroy the Producers of the Wealth that everyone seems to think is unending is going very well. I dont see how we can keep this up much longer........I am getting very tired......

maybe the truth should be free and the sarcsm should cost you......

These 'Forecasts' have been going on since I can remember. It's a lot of Wall St. hype, easy to paint rosy scenarios, that have little basis in fact.

What you say about the unpreparedness of industry, the lag time in gearing up, and the loss of qualified personnel is the Catch 22 that Wall St glosses over in trying to maintain financial momentum. They're full of it! A demand for raw materials will show up in my mining stocks, and so far they are doing nothing more than riding the last hype.

When we've squeezed out the last RPM from old equipment, we'll have to replace it, and much of that equipment is still fairly new from the last boom. I think that's where the real cycle is. We're just making do with what we have right now. Maybe not a bad idea at all.