Word: firms
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...investors think what they want about who's placing the buy-and-sell orders. As far as the investors knew, the generals were the geniuses doing the sophisticated, proprietary trading stuff that brought such marvelous returns over the last 40 years. And, in our case, the accounting firm of Halpern & Mantovani, CPA, in Encino, Calif., Chais' chief bean counter, pumped out the quarterly statements as if it were all rock solid...
That finding seems to be holding up in this economic downturn as well. At the beginning of the year, polling firm Gallup started asking 1,000 people every night how they felt. Gallup has found that moods do jump around a lot. People are happier on the weekends. Holidays are also big mood boosters. But in general, Gallup has found that the nation's mood has remained relatively stable the whole year, bouncing within the same range even as the economy has deteriorated...
Effects of the slowdown have led to less extravagance and a more severe emphasis on economy. "Earlier, the sky was the limit, but now people are holding smaller events with fewer guests," says Sneha Tejwani, who runs the event-planning firm Occasionz Unlimited in Mumbai. "No Bollywood stars performing at over-the-top bashes this time. Business is down to a third of what it was." Even flower suppliers in Bangalore, India's floriculture center, are reportedly withering due to decreased demand for flowers for decorating weddings and other events...
...Japan learned a similar lesson during the economy's Lost Decade after a stocks-and-real-estate bubble burst in the early 1990s. In a pathetic attempt to avoid losses, Japanese banks kept pumping fresh funds into debt-ridden, unprofitable firms to keep them afloat. These companies came to be known as zombie firms - they appeared to be living but were actually dead, too burdened by debt to do much more than live off further handouts. One economist called Japan a "loser's paradise." The classic zombie was retail chain Daiei, which limped along for years, crushed by debt...
...calling GM and Chrysler zombies. Nor am I predicting that the U.S. economy will glide effortlessly through a crisis at the Big Three. But history tells us that no firm is completely indispensable to a national economy, no matter how much of an institution it appears to be. Nor do firms need to be preserved in exactly the form in which we all know them. Any time a giant, money-losing corporation fails, the results are ugly. But the outcome may still look better than a zombie...