http://www.google.com/trends?q=the+great+recession

http://www.mint.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/expansionrecessiontimeline3.jpg

So, in my lifetime there have been just 49 months (or slightly over 4 years) of recession, compared to 350 months of expansion.

That doesn’t seem a bad ratio?

That label in itself is depressing!

“the great recession”

a lot of imagination, those IMF guys.

http://tinyurl.com/asz76d

I don’t understand why more advertising agencies don’t front up to their clients and tell them to refine their online assets before advertising it to the broader market. Just because you have the money to advertise doesn’t mean its a good time to spend it.

If the experience of using the site is crap, then bad “word of mouth” will follow.

Rowans motto of build a good site and then let customers sell it for you in my mind is the ultimate form of advertising.

To do that you have to win a niche group of individuals.

“People doing cool stuff will be the focus on the internet again, not start-ups with VC money and good PR companies.”

Agreed. A friend working on a web start-up has iterated numerous times in the past 3 years and recently arrived at a solution pretty well matched to the recession.

“…out of destruction a new spirit of creativity arises”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_destruction

On another note, maybe all this will lead to an increase in business blogging, given its cost effectiveness.

These accommodation properties are starting to struggle and have begun re-accessing their marketing plans. Because my website is devoted to accommodation with experiences, I seem to have become a winner with many of them wanting to join.

No longer do they need to compete against big brand hotels or run-down motels who are flogging themselves at cut throat prices. Now they can stand apart.

Unlike most hotels, boutique accommodation is an experience, not just a room, so they will always cost a little more.

My plan is to continue to invest in my site and work my little ass off so that in 3 years time when greed dominates again, I will hopefully be able to take full advantage of it.

I’m very pleased to note the absence of anybody saying “when the tide goes out everybody gets to see who has been swimming naked”. As true as that may be, it has quickly become the most overused metaphor.

Have you noticed how many of the habits and behaviours that are being suggested as solutions to this situation are “old fashioned”:

Spend less than you earn
Sell things at a profit
Live in a house you can afford
If you want to get ahead, make something new and do the hard yards – i.e. no short cuts
Try and be “smart, generous and hard working” (well put Mr Moscovitz)

My grand-parents would feel right at home today. Then again, the Depression wasn’t something they read about on Wikipedia.

“If the producers of the show were anything other than scumbags they’d be doing follow-up visits now and showing the pain and suffering the families feel now that their levered asset bubble has burst.”

Some (not me, note) might argue that it would be reasonably scumbag-ish either way. :-)

Wikipedia has some numbers about the 1987 crash – aka Black Monday

The baby boomers who had money to invest should’ve been using that money to buy tool and die machines from hamburg, not pricing younger people out of the housing markets and buying 7 series cars from munich. A factory in Levin can export to all over the world – how does another mcmansion suburb in tawa make New Zealand more competitive internationally?

The benefits that I see from this coming crunch (which is going to get a lot worse imho before it bottoms out and starts to organically right itself) are:

* Companies that export and are contributing to the economy will be the success stories – not property investors / financial companies.

* House price affordability will be corrected.

* People doing cool stuff will be the focus on the internet again, not start-ups with VC money and good PR companies.

:)

People the world over are freaking out and stopping buying non-essentials. To an extent we’re lucky that we’re food exporters, people still have to eat. People don’t still have to buy flat screen TVs or over priced strollers for kids. On the whole this trend away from wasteful consumption is probably positive but the shock to the system will be painful. At least our slumping dollar makes us exporters a little better off.

One of my hobbies now is watching re-runs of residential property investment TV shows. People with young families borrowing 100% to buy their 5th investment property. If the producers of the show were anything other than scumbags they’d be doing follow-up visits now and showing the pain and suffering the families feel now that their levered asset bubble has burst.

That said, there’s cause to be excited because now is the time to double down on product development…be frugal and creative and build cool stuff.

I’d kind of say that the “yes we can” attitude you’ve seen is more a gung-ho reaction to a massive injection trying to continue the status quo as much as possible. It’s this years, and this presidency’s, war on terror – but the attitude of the general populace is still one that “we can beat this thing through sheer financial clout” – I’m just not sure if that’s a valid hope anymore…