December 2008 Archives

I'm confused.

Growing up, I heard it a lot.... "Save your money...."

I finally bought into it, and for the most part I'm glad I have lived by that approach - with a few glitches along the way.

But lately, as I've absorbed this business beat, I've been hearing something else as the economy takes a dive -- respected people, business leaders, politicians...now many of them are saying, "Spend your money...."

It's the only way we are going to bring our consumer-driven economy back to health.

Noted leaders in retail, in car sales, lament the downfall of their industries as they plead with consumers to keep the economy going by buying their products. It's the only way titans such as GM became such titans, and employed so many people - because people spent money on their products, which fueled and came to symbolize the American way of life, some say.

Consumer-driven our economy absolutely is. Consumer spending drives 70 percent of our economy. It's what creates jobs, buys homes, cars....

It drives our credit markers. It drives everything...

I'd like to think much of that spending is for what we need. But I doubt it. For some - even myself at times - the swipe of a credit card feels good, and that debt I'm tacking on to my balance might even be to indulge myself.

But I'm still worried.

We've got conflicting messages in this society. Spend vs. Save. Spend vs. Save.

Commercials for cars and awesome televisions lure us while our parents and the people who know better tell us to not take the bait.

While some may say this is just a byproduct of living in a market economy, it seems to me the consequences are very dangerous. Credit card companies get kids out of college to get credit cards, and they go out and rack up a bunch of debt. Our own government -our own leaders - rack up trillions in debt, as if it's a good thing.

And then we act shocked when our economy goes down the drain because a bunch of bankers sold off their risk to a bunch of other financial folks, who sold off their risk.

What's the message - if you're not a business school graduate. Should we save? Should we buy?

It seems like a tension that needs to be worked out. I don't know about you, but it seems like some of the tension can be worked out in our schools. How come I feel bad that none of this financial stuff came my way while I was in school? Maybe I wasn't listening, but I'm pretty sure there was no class at my school called Financial Literacy 101, or Bank Account Basics. In a society geared on getting us to spend, it seems like we need some kind of counterbalance to get us to save - or at least know the best way to spend.

I don't think we get that. We have to learn in times like these - and that's the worst time - because we are scared to spend. And that fear isn't good for any business.

I've resigned myself - again, with a few glitches on the way - to buying what I need, instead of what I want. Maybe that's the only way to go. But it's hard. I want that fancier car, the nicer suit, etc.

But is buying all that stuff - or even being able to buy all that stuff -- the American dream?

Let's hope we haven't come to that.

Among the things I've learned on this beat over the last four months as a business reporter, is that our economy is grounded on consumer confidence. Close our wallets and the entire economy shuts down.

That sure seems like an awfully flimsy foundation for an economy. I hope I'm wrong.

There's got to be more than getting people to buy something that drives society.

At the end of the day, maybe saving will get us to whatever that something is. But that's going to take a lot of sacrifice.

The NAMM show - an annual showcase for music equipment manufacturers to display their latest wares - will be held next month in Anaheim.

And I'm guessing that much of the buzz among vendors at the event will be the nation's faultering economy. After all, music programs and libraries are typically sone of the first things to get cut, or at least signficantly reduced, when times are tight.

NAMM President and CEO Joe Lamond put it this way:

"In our history we've seen the Great Depression, multiple recessions, world wars, extinction of entire instrument categories and the invention of new ones," he said."Iconic brands have come and gone. Through it all, NAMM Members have shown guts and determination. NAMM Members are survivors."

I certainly hope they are. Because music is a massive part of who we are. It's one of those universal languages that really does bring us all together.

I began playing the guitar at the age of 12, and from that time on music has been a big part of my life. And it's been a multi-cultural experience, a broadening journey that prompted me to learn classical guitar, jazz guitar, country guitar and just about everything in between.

The best part? It's something you take with you wherever you go. Your talent - however marginal or advanced it may be - is a gift you can open up and share with others. and they don't even have to learn the language ... they already speak it. 

April of 2007 was certainly not the best time to launch a new bank.

But that's when Stellar Business Bank was born. And despite all the woes that have since roiled the economy - a severe downturn in housing, the collapse of many financial and retail institutions, scores of layoffs and a climate in which U.S. automakers are struggling to survive -  Stellar has managed to hold its own.

 The Covina bank reported a net loss of $1.6 million for the first nine months of 2008. Not good. But Timothy P. Walbridge, Stellar's president and CEO, said that's still in line with other California banks, many of which reported similar losses for the same period.

Walbridge also noted that several key indices are trending the right way for Stellar. As of Sept. 30, the bank reported assets of $88.1 million, a 37 percent increase from the prior quarter. Total deposits were $67.9 million, up 57 percent from the previous quarter.

Not bad for a bank operating in this economy - especially when other banks are getting government help.

I always figured retailers would be happy when shoppers forgot to use the gift cards they received.

After all, that's money in the pocket for Wal-Mart, Target and all the other businesses that offer these pieces of plastic. It sounds good in theory. But with the economy being so tight, big players and and small ones alike would rather have you come in and redeem the cards, according to Al Frank, a retail analyst with DeLoitte & Touche.

"This whole holiday season has been about driving traffic into the stores and moving merchandise off the shelves -- even if you lose some money on the merchandise," he said.

Well, that's a dynamic I'd never considered.

It's a little sad, but I guess times are so lean that retailers are willing to take a loss on the cards in hopes that shoppers ultimately spend more money. In many cases, it probably works.

But with companies like Circuit City, KB Toys, Linens 'n Things and Mervyns already filing for bankruptcy protection ...I hope it works fast.

I've talked to a few business lately, who are bucking the trend of larger ones that are going bankrupt.

They are niche businesses -- custom shoe shops, vacuum salemen, bra merchants and others.

And they've all mentioned that even as the economy tanks, they are staying alive, because they cater to such customized needs that we all need them.

There are the custom-fitting shoes for the wider foot; the vacuum bags you can't find at Wal-Mart; and the bra that fits just right.

So, at a time when the Circuit Cities of the world are failing, it's good to know some businesses that sell stuff we need are still afloat and are optimist

The traffic in and around Westfield Santa Anita Shopping Centre seemed intense on Friday as shoppers looked for good deals.

But I have to back up a second. As much traffic as there was, mall merchants and customers said it wasn't as intense as last year.

In fact, one couple -- who were visiting the mall -- said looks can be kind of deceiving.

The traffic around the mall was not because of more shoppers, but rather it was because of opening day at Santa Anita race track.

A merchant at the mall said, yeah, it was busy, but a lot of it was just "social" traffic. That is, people just wanted to get out -- but they weren't necessarily buying.

It's just more bad news for retailers.

Look, I suppose, can be deceiving.

"I've been on the bench for 23 years, and I've never seen anything like this," said David G. Sills the presiding justice for the Fourth District Court of Appeals, Division Three."

Some say  answer: is to end prop. 13, which "was cleverly designed to make it virtually impossible for California to raise taxes...the result, of course, is that California has been deferring maintenance for a very long time. Now their judges will be working from home, their schools will fall further into decay, and their bridges will continue to crumble."

Others say, "We have reached the tipping point and fell over. This is the right time for the State to declare bankruptcy, defeat those that approve of illegal tax increases--which if enacted will bring about more unemployment--and repeal those laws that kills jobs and growth."

Who would have thought that a bank would actually refuse to take money. But sure enough, that's what Friendly Hills Bank in Whittier did this week.

They turned down a cool $1.6 million in Treasury bailout money that would have been used to buy up preferred stock in the bank.

Many banks have taken the billions available in government bank bailout money, of course. But here's one -- perhaps even the only one, though we're still checking --  to have applied for part of the billions available, and refused it once the government had approved it.

Officials seemed to shy away from saying it was a public relations coup. But I suspect it.

The word "government bailout" isn't exactly a marketing director's dream, even if your bank doesn't need the money.

Anyway, good for Friendly Hills. They can afford to refuse it. And in the end, that's got to make their customers feel good.

As the man who will be president prepares a public spending plan, locals should start drawing up their wishlists.

In the SGV, highway and rail projects have long been delayed or killed. Now is probably the best time to start begging, because who knows when this chance will pass again.

Brother, can you spare a dime on Christmas Eve: "First-time applications for state unemployment benefits jumped by 30,000 to a seasonally adjusted 586,000 in the week ending Dec. 20, the government said, based on reports of actual filings at state offices around the nation. That's the highest since November 1982."

Banks are sooo yesterday. Now  you want to saddle up to the Senate or House for that easy credit and low-interest loan.

Oh. Lordy. You mean men and women will have to look their age?

"There comes a point when you are putting too much time and money into your vanity," said Peri Basel, a practice consultant in Chappaqua, N.Y., who advises cosmetic doctors on marketing strategies. "For me, the vanity issue is: Where does it stop? If you are going for buttock implants, do you really need that?"

Or as this OC columnist says, "The gravity of the shift from youth to reality in our culture could be enormous. Women might have to look like themselves. Men, who were increasingly turning to cosmetic procedures to eradicate years, will still have Viagra but the blue pill won't erase silver threads among the gold or a deeply furrowed brow."

It's Friday evening at 7:15., so what should I write about? World hunger? Undiscovered galaxies? The ever-increasing price of postage stamps?

All worthy subjects, but I think I'll confine these comments to the auto bailout. It's a lot smaller than automakers were originally asking for, but $17.4 billion still sounds like a pretty hefty sum to me - certainly enough to take first class the next time I fly. Or enough to travel via private jet.

And when you come down to it, that's been part of the problem. Sure, these American automakers are saddled with huge legacy costs - the kinds of costs our foreign competitors don't have to worry about. I'll grant them that. But for cripes sake, do they have to travel by private jet everywhere they go?

The scariest part about this whole business is how these supposedly bright people allowed their budgets to get so overspent and out of whack. I like the fact that this bailout comes with some tough concessions, including limits on executive pay and the elimination of some company perks like those pesky corporate jets. 

Come back down to reality guys. Use this money wisely to begin getting things back on track. And if you can't manage it, hand the reins over to someone who can.  

At 8.9 percent, L.A. County's unemployment rate is high enough. But there are pockets in the San Gabriel Valley that are even higher, and that's worrisome.

El Monte, Baldwin Park and La Puente hover around 10 percent unemployment and above.

Bob Machuca, whose job it is to go out and talk to businesses for the San Gabriel Valley Economic Partnership, brought up an interesting point about those pockets.

They are part of areas where unskilled, low-wage labor is a fixture.

In good times, these workers find jobs. But in bad times, they are the first to lose them.

Everybody's hurting these days, but the bad economy can be an opportunity, he said, to bring together representatives of labor and industry to figure out ways to retrain these very workers for new work.

I agree.

That would be  vehicle fees.

 According to the OCJ blog, "the concept was that the heavier the vehicle....the more wear and tear on our roads." So you can drive whatever car you want, but your fee will be connected to the type of car you drive. Why hasn't this gained traction? Apparently lobbyists and car makers. But I doubt that will stop anyone now.  

NYT: "President Bush announced $13.4 billion in emergency loans on Friday to prevent the collapse of General Motors and Chrysler, and said another $4 billion would be available for the hobbled automakers in February. The entire bailout is conditioned on the companies undertaking sweeping reorganizations to show that they can return to profitability.
-  The requirements include quickly reducing their debt, in debt for equity swaps, and basically gutting the union of wages and benefits.

Aurora Ayon is doing the work she was meant to do.

As a caregiver for Right at Home Pasadena, she helps elderly clients with physical therapy, errands, light housekeeping and a variety of other things they have difficulty doing. And she's not in the business for any kind of ulterior motive.

"I really love taking care of the elderly -- they are the ones who need it the most," she said. "Sometimes even a hug or a kiss will bring a smile to their face. Through the years you can kind of feel it if they are in pain. You can just look at them ... and you know."

Right at Home currently has about 50 clients, but business has picked up lately because people are finding it more difficult to sell their homes in the current down economy.

If you ever find yourself in that kind of position, you'd do well to have Ayon taking care of you.

Despite rival DHL leaving the country, lower gas prices and profits, FedEx has been cutting costs, and now will cut the salaries of the "CEO and other salaried personnel will receive less pay for the coming year. The chief executive's base salary will drop by 20%, the biggest cut."

More importantly we have to worry about no FedEx superbowl ad. Remember last year's? Neither do I. (Girardot probably remembers)

"...based on Sept. 30 consolidated federal statements, which showed that Americans' total household net worth, diminished by falling stock prices and home equity, is $56.5 trillion. But rising costs for unfunded social programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security increased to $56.4 trillion - and that was before the more recent stock market crash, $700 billion bank bailout, and monster federal deficits chalked up in October and November."

OK. What I really wanted to say is Washington Mutual sucks, but it was a bit much in the headline.

You probably already know that banks have been cutting credit card limits for holders. Basically, one month you have a $4,000 limit, next you have a $2,000 limit.

Now, I have a WaMu card. After leaving my job a few months ago, (voluntarily. I know, good timing...anyway) I racked up credit card debt because it took me a while to find a job. So I have high debt, but I'm beginning to pay if off. Shortly before being employed, WaMu abruptly cut my limit. Now, I probably wouldn't have used it, but it was nice to know it was there just in case.

Cutting the limit isn't as bad as what it does to my credit score. My overall debt is higher now compared to my limit, which I had nothing to do with. But it's screwed up my score.

After a back and forth with WaMu on what happened, I told this (taxpayer bailed out! albeit through Chase) bank that eventually, I will get out of debt. And when I do, I'll drop its card, never use the bank again. Of course, now that it belongs to Chase, I'll have to cut that bank out as well. Geez.

In the headline for the New York Times (it's only in the print version) is this "Agency vows to print as much money as needed..." 

I'm clearly flummoxed by what the brightest financial people (who I guess got us in this mess in the first place) think will be the best way to stabilize the economy. But I keep thinking that the cure is worse than the disease.

"At some point, and without knowing the timing, the Fed is going to have to destroy all that money it is creating," said Alan Blinder, a professor of economics at Princeton and a former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve.

We're all getting older.

And if you're living in California, there's a good chance that sometime, somewhere down the line you may walk into a doctor's office and be told there aren't enough doctors to go around so you'll have to come back another day.

"What?" you'll ask incredulously. "I've always been able to walk in here and be seen. What's going on?"

At that point, the office manager will likely pull you gently aside while she thumbs through a small, dog-eared book full of grim statistics that show why California's health care network is so understaffed.

The book will probably have a lot of population figures, employment stats and pie charts. The biggest slice of the pie will represent the state's aging baby boomer population, while a much smaller piece will denote the pool of available medical personnel to treat all those people.    

At that point, you'll probably chuckle and say, "Nice one, you really had me going there. Now where's the doctor?" But the truth is, there may not be a doctor for you that day.

Hopfully, it won't come to that. But David Hayes-Bautista, a professor of medicine and director of the Center for the Study of Latino Health and Culture at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, says we're playing catch-up when it comes to providing enough doctors and other medical personnel.

"As we look at the number of medical students ... basically we were educating the same number in 2003 that we were in 1970," he said. "The UC system put a new program in place to increase that number in 2004, but clearly we took our eye off the medical education ball."

Recent figures from the state Employment Development Department reveal there's a real need for a variety of other health care jobs as well. In Los Angeles County alone, continued growth in the health care industry will necessitate the hiring of 713 new licensed vocational nurses per year.

I just hope they're all there when I need 'em.

A woman wrote about her relationship with her boss.

She had an internship  and the man offered to become her "benefactor." The deal was he pays her rent, the bill on the limit-free credit card he and takes her on lavish vacations.

"It's a lifestyle that would be the envy of any young woman who enjoys life."

Apparently now she realizes that others don't share her attempts to ease her troubled mind in this economy.

I have to confess, I always wanted to get unemployment benefits just to see what it's like. There has always been a stigma to those on the dole, including that it breeds laziness. But that may not be the case:

"New research from Raj Chetty, a young Berkeley economist, suggests that moral hazard may not be why more generous benefits seem to lead to more unemployment. Chetty realized that unemployment benefits do not merely pay people to stay out of work; they also protect them from having to rush into an unsuitable job. It is nothing to celebrate if unemployed engineers cannot afford to spend three months finding a job for which they are qualified but are forced to work as real estate agents to put food on the table. A longer gap between jobs is sometimes preferable"

The unfolding $50 billion  scandal has stripped away the thin veneer of credibility that big-time investors had left. This scandal is amongst several that have been popping up.

And more could be on the way. The economic theory behind this, by John Kenneth Galbraith, is "inventory of undiscovered embezzlement" that flourishes when markets are good. The Madoff swindle is especially eggregioius because of the close-knit associates, friends and family involved.

This cliche works in the financial world: If it looks too good to be true, it is. These stories may just be the beginning.

CEOs are under the microscope like never before.

With the recent bailout of such industry giants as Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and American Insurance Group, many are casting questioning glances toward the people in charge.

They're wondering if these are the right people to be leading these companies. I wonder too. Many of these executives are earning 400 times the amount of their rank-and-file employees - 400 times!

Now I appreciate talent as well as the next guy, but I seriously question whether ANY top executive deserves that kind of compensation. And I bet most people feel the same way.

Clearly, these companies need skilled people at the helm. But let's come back down to planet Earth and pay them a salary that's more in keeping with the overall operation.

The Chicago-based Tribune Co.'s bankruptcy this week hit me on a lot of levels -- not the least of which was that I am a former employee of that company.

But beyond me, the discussion in recent days turned to the future of journalism - particularly print media. And that discussion should be a wake-up call for any consumer of news and the Internet. Here's a link to KPCC host Pat Morrison's show on the subject: http://www.scpr.org/programs/pattmorrison/

The gist of it was this: if newspapers completely fail, and reporters go with them, the Internet will not be far behind.

As it stands, professional reporters are paid to dig up information and present it to readers in the form of original content.

If there is no business model that can compensate them to do this, the Internet sites that rely on newspaper stories for content won't have anything to report -- and that's a lot of them.

Yes, wire services will help. But what about consistent local news?

Forgive me for perhaps tooting the horn of my profession. I'm not seeking an industry bailout -- not yet anyway. And don't get me wrong. Citizen journalists have their place. 

But this seemed a very relevant discussion for anyone who likes to read the news, and who cares about having paid, fulltime journalists trying to get information to readers.

If you're a rank-and-file worker in corporate America, this has got to be one hell of a trying time.

In recent days, layoff announcements have been coming hard and heavy from virtually every sector - retail, telecommunications, the hotel industry and even the National Football League.

Sony plans to reduce its headcount by 8,000 jobs by March of 2010, the Wyndham Hotel Group says it will jetison about 4,000 positions through the first quarter of 2009 and the NFL plans to shed about 150 employees over the next 60 days.  

These companies are hurting for a variety of reasons - lack of capital because of tight credit markets, loss of consumer business, industrywide downturns ... the list goes on.

And it paints a grim picture.

But even in this climate, Bank of America's announced plan to cut 30,000 to 35,000 jobs over the next three years still takes my breath away. I mean, that's a LOT of jobs. Think about it.  Imagine a company that has, say 200 employees. That's not huge but it's not small either.

Now multiply those 200 employees by five and you get 1,000. That's a fairly big company - still not massive, but definitely substantial. But then take that same company with 1,000 workers and imagine 34 more companies of the same size.

Now we're beginning to capture the scope of Bank of America's layoffs. And these are not just numbers. They're people - people with children, jobs and piano recitals and scoccer games to get to. And they will be losing their jobs.

Hopefully, you still have yours. And if you do, consider this from Oscar Wilde:

"The best way to appreciate your job is to imagine yourself without one."

I've got a whole new perspective on those big rigs my teeny little Honda weeves through every morning on the 210.

Yes. Their big diesel engines pollute.

But you can't blame the owners of these giants for decrying increased regulation, set to be approved on Friday, that will cost their industry billions of dollars.

They are struggling, like everybody else these days. They are laying off people. And they will likely lay off more, as they adjust their companies to the greening of transportation and a slumping economy.

But the regulation is hard to argue with.

We live in a polluted state, and it seems we have come to a choice between the health threats of particulate matter and oxides of nitrogen or the health of trucking companies.

It's hard not to lean toward life on this choice, and begin facing the hard consequences of the extent to which we've polluted our air.

It seems that companies are laying off workers left and right these days.

And the scariest part? The cuts are happening in a variety of sectors, ranging from electronics and overall retail to telecommunications, construction and the financial industry.

The fallout continued on Tuesday when Sony Corp. announced it is slashing 4 percent of its worldwide work force - 8,000 of its 185,000 jobs - and shuttering five to six plants, about 10 percent of its 57 factories.

But it didn't stop there.

Sony, Danaher Corp., Wyndham Worldwide, the National Football League and Principal Financial Group announced job cuts collectively totaling about 14,400 positions.

The severity of the nation's recession became apparent Friday when the Labor Department announced that employers slashed 533,000 jobs in November, the most in 34 years.

"It's a staggering number," said Gary Kaplan, president of Gary Kaplan & Associates, a Pasadena-based executive search firm. "I'd love to think we were at a point where all of this was running its course. But as Al Jolson said ... `You ain't seen nothing yet."'

Kaplan said the private-sector side of his business - placement of executives in the corporate world - is off by about 35 percent.

But employee placement in the nonprofit and academic sectors is still holding up well, although that could change, he said.

"Even during the last two recessions these two sectors never let us down," Kaplan said. "But I'm not convinced that will be the case this time around." 

It's funny how things can sometimes work out for the best, even if they are not how you originally planned. Norma Chavez-Nielsen thought she was going to be the next Oprah -- the Latina Oprah.

That was years ago when as a student at UC Berkeley she studied communications, with visions of becoming a broadcaster bouncing around in her head.

But as it turned out, when she was really honest with herself, it wasn't what she wanted at all. What she really wanted was to run a business -- a bakery, in fact.

So, she started her own Bakery -- the Churrolandia and The Funnel Cake Factory in Whittier. In the process, she revived a family business, and showed that even when the first option doesn't work out there's always hope for another -- even in business.      

Banks are collapsing, homes are in foreclosure and the nation's Big Three automakers are asking for as much as $34 billion in bailout funds.

But statistics reveal there's still a strong demand for workers in California's health care industry.

In Los Angeles County alone, continued growth in health care will necessitate the hiring of 713 new licensed vocational nurses per year, according to the state Employment Development Department.

Matt Poore, 28, of Glendora figures he made a wise move getting into the industry.

He works as an emergency room nurse at Placentia-Linda Hospital, does critical care transport in the Rancho Cucamonga area and is a clinical instructor at Mt. San Antonio College.

"I like this industry because there's plenty of room for moving into different departments," he said. "If you work in ER for a couple years and get tired of that you can go to labor and delivery. And if you don't like that you can go to critical care - there's real job security."

It's good to hear there are still some jobs out there that are in demand - jobs that people actually like! 

Anderson Business Technology is one of those companies that has managed to survive for decades while still moving with the times.

There aren't a lot of businesses that can pull that off.

The Pasadena-based company began in began in 1912 when C. Elmer Anderson came to Southern California on vacation. Anderson, who lived in Michigan and worked for the Woodstock Typewriter Co., noticed there weren't many typewriter repair technicians around.

Before long, he was repairing typewriters for local customers and businesses. That effort morphed into Anderson Business Technology. And the rest, as they say, is history.

I spoke with President David D. Anderson, 50, and Donald H. Anderson, 80, the company's chairman. And I could tell they both love the business and what they're doing.  That probably has a lot to do with the high customer satisfaction level the store has generated.

Good for them.

It was interesting to hear different takes on the billions the major American automakers are asking for from the American taxpayer to keep them from going under.

Whether people agreed or not that their should be a bailout, one thing was clear Friday: the industry is in for a big change, and that will trickle down to what we see locally.

There will be less dealership lots. We might live in a new world in which not as many car dealerships will line the sides of freeways. Credit to buy a car will be harder to get. And those cars will likely be more efficient and smaller.

But a couple of caveats also emerged.

One was, despite dismal vehicle sales, dealers continue to report more sales of trucks and SUVs as gas prices come back down.

In six months, if those prices are still low, the psychology of buyers might shift away from green fuel and back toward gasoline, one dealer told me.

Another caveat was just what will replace car sales tax revenue for local cities.

That was an open question, which both dealers and city officials were asking as of Thursday. 

It was the kind of news that would give most anyone pause.

A Wal-Mart worker is trampled to death during a  "Black Friday" rush of over-eager shoppers. There aren't many stories that manage to catch me totally off guard. But this was one did.

In Southern California, we've all gotten pretty used to hearing about senseless deaths. Innocents caught in the crossfire of a gang shooting, todders left in hot cars, the young kid  who steps in front of a Metrolink train while listening to his iPod ...

But this was a different animal. Tragic? To be sure. But preventable? I'm not so sure. The fact is, I'd file this one away in the extremely-rare-and-likely-never-to-happen-again-anytime-soon drawer.

In short, I think this guy just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. 

The family of the victim - who sadly had just been hired at the Garden City, N.Y. Wal-Mart about a week before the incident - filed a wrongful-death lawsuit on Wednesday, claiming store ads offering deep discounts "created an atmosphere of competition and anxiety" that led to "crowd craze."

That's probably pretty accurate.

The lawsuit claims  there was inadequate security for a pre-dawn crowd estimated at 2,000 and that Wal-Mart "engaged in specific marketing and advertising techniques to specifically attract a large crowd and create an environment of frenzy and mayhem and was otherwise careless, reckless and negligent."

Still, I just don't know that anyone could have predicted what was about to happen.

Thankfully, that kind of  hysteria doesn't occur often. I've never been in a situation that intense, but I do remember being at a Steve Miller/Eagles concert years ago in Cincinnati where things got pretty scary.

At some point during the concert the crowd began to surge forward toward the stage. And then I realized that I was moving right along with them even though my feet weren't touching the ground. We were all so tightly packed together that I was held in place as we moved toward the band.

Fortunately, I emerged from that incident intact. I only wish Jdimytai Damour could done the same.

Did anyone read L.A. Times automotive critic Dan Neil's piece today on the Big Three?

Here's the link: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-neil2-2008dec02,0,7103298.story

I've got to say, I agree with Mr. Neil.

If we're going to dump billions in bridge loans into the Big Three's accounts, the government might as well buy them and let the force of taxpayer money and the government push GM, Ford and Chrysler toward vehicles that are truly ready for the 21st century.

Call it socialism, or whatever you want, but something has to give.

As Neil points out, GM is way too big for itself. Yet, it's full of talent that, if channeled in the right way, could not only create green-running vehicles for a new age, but wean our country off of our oil dependence.

As long as the kind of thinking that drove board directors to choose short-term profit of SUVs over a long-term future prevails, billions in loans to automakers will likely evaporate before our eyes.

That's because creating a profitable green-energy running car is likely many years away.

They simply can't be profitable right now. But they could be. And as Neil suggests, the Big Three, and their talent, could help us get there. And once we're there, the government could sell GM, and even the other two, at a profit. But it can happen only if there's willingness to sacrifice short-term profit for longterm gain.

In a radio interview this morning, Neil echoed a point I think many Americans these days share -- or at least are seriously pondering.

We are at a historic moment. Yeah, we could sit back and let the "free" market do its thing and let new players emerge. Or, we could seize this moment by seizing an entire American auto industry and re-gearing it for a new world, and in fact to lead change in that new world.

It was a world that this very industry changed when the first Ford Model T came off the line.

It's a world that American automakers could help change again, if we're willing to set aside ideology and put new ideas on the assemby line.

Well, they finally called it.

According to National Bureau of Economic Research, our nation is now officially in a recession. Have been since December of 2007, they say.

Well, gee whiz, who would have thunk that?

I mean, with the housing market still tanking, banks collapsing, credit markets tight and U.S, automakers asking for a handout, I figured things were going swimmingly.   

At this point I suppose we could have cellos swoop in to play a dark, yet nervous dirge to punctuate the economic chaos that's gripping our wary nation. But I don't think we need it.

If you can find ONE person in Southern California who didn't think we were already in  - or at least close to -  a recession I'll lock myself up in a padded room and listen to Kenny G's Christmas album.

And believe me, I don't want to do that.

But the fact is, there are really no surprises here. I don't think anyone is suddenly clasping their hands over their ears while they and run around screaming, "It's a recession! It's a recession!" 

Some economists say a recession occurs whenever the gross domestic product - the total
output of goods and services - declines for two consecutive quarters. Our nation's GDP turned
negative in the July-September quarter of this year, and many economists believe it is
falling in the current quarter at an even sharper rate.

I certainly don't mean to make light of an economic situation that has cost people their jobs or homes and prompted the closure or rescue of businesses big and small. But there is something curious about suddenly applying a label to all of this as if it were now a different animal.

It's almost like looking back on a sweltering summer and suddenly saying, "Boy, that was REALLY REALLY  hot."

Yeah, we know it's been hot. Now we're just hoping for a cool-down - some return to economic normalcy.

And I firmly believe we'll get it.