Seventy Two Thousand at One Blow

Today the job losses were brutal; Caterpillar, Pfizer, Sprint Nextel, Home Depot, Texas Instruments, ING and others announced 72,000 job cuts today, 207,000 jobs so far this year in 27 days. True to form the market rose a little because job cuts are presumed to bolster a company's bottom line by cutting costs.

However, I beg to differ, one or two companies announcing job cuts may be a good economic play, many companies announcing terrific layoffs in one day does not point to a good economic boost in my mind. When consumer spending is 70% of GDP, this adds a large number of consumers to the list who will not be buying or utilizing services not to mention the ripple effect of all the domestic service providers and assistants who also experience a reduction in livelihood because their services are no longer needed and who, in turn, will stop buying as well.

Anytime a city or town suffers from tourism losses due to a natural disaster or similar detriment, the economic cost is always tallied but when job losses are announced, the market only looks at the individual company's bottom-line and not the economic cost of those layoffs. The companies announcing losses are not isolated to certain industries, they represent the corporate spectrum which is never a good sign.

The market also improved today because sales of existing homes went up some 6%; this is not good news when most of those homes that were sold were foreclosures snapped up at bottom feeder prices; is this really good for your neighborhood? What happened to all those people who lost those homes?

It is odd but I still don't feel like the gravity of our economic reality on Long Island. The news is coming from school via my children, about where everyone is going for February break. Even I, as I have previously stated, am going to go away for a few days at the end of next week. I pulled the trigger and booked the flights and reserved the car though I am still undecided on hotel.

I am still questioning my motivation because I don't want to view it as a foolish, last hurrah, or as a foolish expense. I must be able to come up with a good reason for why I choose to spend this money at this time. And, I need to stop wasting my days searching travel sites for good deals so I can get back to the number one task at hand - looking for a job!