"days"? Try months! - ·[▪_▪]·

Oh my God! - Soroush

Where are the sick bags? And, when the light goes off can I have another drink? - WorldofHiglet

I think will see many other Black Months :) - Live Crunch

Well in the next 15 days the damage to our plane will be so severe it will take us a few years to fly again. Sigh. - Robert Scoble

Wait till you see the freaky febraury! - Praful Halakhandi

Watch out for dropping shoes. - Mike Doeff

o_O well just as long as we don't end up having to eat each other....I want to be alive, but not an extra *from* Alive... - WorldofHiglet

Times are tough indeed - innovation and dedication is definitely going to be needed - Klaus

WorldofHiglet: you are welcome to come to Half Moon Bay and drink my whisky. - Robert Scoble

The next 2 1/2 months will give us a better picture as to how the next 2-3+ years will be IMHO. Retail, Auto, Commercial Real Estate, "Old" media, Credit Cards, Auto Loans, etc still haven't even surfaced yet. They're boiling, but not much has been said about them besides Autos and the retail sales. Not much bad news in the next 3 months, we could be at bottom. My guess is the bottom will fall out by April. - Mike VanLare (slayerboy)

cheery morning thoughts. Thanks Rob! It will get bad, especially in expensive non-essential industry like Social Media - Jaiku is the start, although not too sure that is credit crunch related, a lot of projects like that will lose or tighten their funding, if not already. And some will fail. - Tim

I might take you up on that, Robert, but after this plane has landed safely. I think I saw Earnest Borgnine and that's never a good sign...! - WorldofHiglet

Tim: I blogged when I was unemployed and I will blog all the way through this @god willing! - Robert Scoble

If I am able to obtain a full time job in the next 2-3 months, that means we will all be okay. If I don't, that means we're in for a rough ride... Just call me an economic groundhog. wooooo - Dean Clark

It's going take us years to reach bottom. It's gonna be bad and long folks. - Gregg H.

Greggish: not true. We will be at the bottom within days. The problem is it will feel like we are still going down for up to 10 months. - Robert Scoble

Well I actually agree with you there, Robert (don't faint). Many people will feel like that but there will be opportunities for those who can see the light at the end of the tunnel. - WorldofHiglet

No Spidra! No need for that, really. You have to keep your nerve and it will be cherry blossoms and sunshine before you know it. - WorldofHiglet

It's like the end of the 1953 War of the Worlds, and we're all huddling in that church waiting for the end or something. - Ciaoenrico

Isn't part of the going down the feeling of going down? But part of the problem is that this mess can't bottom within weeks. Until the banks can unload their inventory, they're gonna be hurting and with all the inventory out there, it'll take a year or more to work through that. Combine that with all the regulatory problems, credit issues and the coming massive, massive, massive drop off in consumer spending and we're talking about a deep depression coming. - ·[▪_▪]·

Despite the obvious difficulties, it's important to try and remain optimistic. I've been reading a lot of really negative articles in the UK recently, almost suggesting that the situation we are currently in is entirely hopeless. One article yesterday asked why even get a job. Funnily enough, that isn't the solution to economic downturn. - TheLovableRogue

@nicerobot completely agree with you on that. I hope I'm a little more optimistic about these things and say that by April we'll see how close we are to the bottom. Right now, the way the economy relies on debt. The more debt you and I have, the better off the economy is, which is why they want us to keep spending. All I keep on hearing from people is how they are paying off debts left and right and saving.....this WILL be ugly. Also, the Great Depression only really affected the US, now it's global. - Mike VanLare (slayerboy)

@Spidra Thanks :) I was edumacated to believe that the Great Depression really only happened in the US. So it did effect a lot of countries. But, what's different now is we owe countries money. A lot. What happens when China calls back their loans? It's going to be ugly, much uglier than the Great Depression. - Mike VanLare (slayerboy)

Scoble is a raging optimist for predicting only 15 days of turbulence. - Michael Markman

slayerboy is totally right; the smart ones are positioning themselves to make money (relatively) while the carnage happens to those who own tradition equities and mutuals - don't believe the market commentators, we are no where near the bottom and equities are not the best long term investment - Bob Sonin

Bob, i agree...however money isn't what will save anyone when this is all said and done. I honestly think actual natural resources will be what makes you rich or not. (land, gardens, food, clean water). Only the billionaires will be the ones where money matters. I could be wrong on that, but I do know for a fact we are not at the bottom. I always equated playing the stock market (even with a 401k) to gambling in a casino, now more than ever. - Mike VanLare (slayerboy)

The focus on arbitrary calendar milestones cracks me up. Like, "2008 was a bad year, aren't we glad *that's* over!" Same with "Black January"--it's of course a continuum and nobody knows where the turning points are, in fact, it's fractal with infinite turning points. I think 2008 was a good year, because Obama won and the Republican party tanked. Getting rid of that kind of idiocy can only be a good leading indicator. - Joe Knapp

Natural disasters are bad enough. Man made ones really suck. - Nicola Quinn

This is a good time to buy real estate if you can afford it. I was trying to buy a foreclosed condo for $28,500. I didn't get that one but there are a lot more for under $30k. - Mike Hussein Cohen

Mike, that kind of thinking is what got us in this mess. Real Estate is not investment. That's part of what created the bubble in real estate. A house is a place to live. Whether renting or owning, each consumer has to weigh costs vs benefits. Flipping houses inflates the real value of housing. Not to mention, the days of anyone getting a mortgage without much to show is over. I could have bought a house a few years ago and the bank wanted to give me a $200,000 mortgage.....on $10/hour job - Mike VanLare (slayerboy)

Actually, real estate is an excellent *long-term* investment. One of the true finite resources accessible to everyone. What got us into this mess was people doing irresponsible things like buying depreciating assets (new cars, vacations, etc) with their magic equity without question. - Paul Reynolds

Paul, good point, long-term, yes. Flipping? No. And I agree that depreciating assets was part of the problem, it's really what is needed for the banking system a majority of the world uses, the system THRIVES on debt. Now that more people are saving and decreasing their debt, it's killing the system. - Mike VanLare (slayerboy)

@Paul - gold and other precious metals fall into that category, too - "finite resources accessible to everyone." but those characteristics do not (themselves) an excellent investment make, especially when a given asset class is almost hopelessly inflated. - Anthony Citrano

@JasonKaneshiro I disagree. Houses aren't like stocks; Stock prices are based on how bad people want them just like houses, BUT it is really tied to the companies performance. Real estate is like RF spectrum, they aren't making more great locations. Most housing markets will get back to their bubble prices, the question is not if, but when. - Chris

@jason You must be better off than many Americans as most folks I know can't afford to take losses like that. Besides, is there really harm in staying in an overvalued house? There is non-monetary value in having a place to live. - Chris

Everybody should have been more cautious and not so greedy. - Mark Bean

Jason's right. I've seen people already walk away from their houses for just that reason. Puts your credit in the crapper, though. So, only someone with their back against the wall would do that. - Robert Scoble

For my Twitter friends who haven't read this post, it is a great conversation re:the economy and different perspectives on what the future may hold. - Ben Hedrington

@jason I can see your point but Robert is right, screwing up your credit maybe be worse in the long term for you than staying in your house longer. Either way it is bad.@mark bean, not everyone was being greedy, many people just wanted to own a house. - Chris

brace for another round of defaults in the first half of 2009. - MikeAmundsen

...where are all the contrarians? - Gregg

Not sure I have much to add to this as I agree with the general course of discussion. I bought my place in early 2006 for a below-market (bubble) price. As I intended to sit on it for a while and knew things were going to get sideways, I did not pay attention to the rising value. Recently I checked zillow.com to see what the trend has been since I purchased and found the predicted value is a parabola with a peak (of 2x price) at December 2007 with end-points of purchase and today. I intend to hold. - Robert Miller

I'm here, Gregg, but it's all been said... :) - Anthony Citrano

Got ya by ten! - MiniMage (FakeLifePerson)

The ONLY silver lining is that if you do have money to spend, you'll probably never see deals like this in retail again. The discounts will continue. - Charlie Anzman