You seem to know someone, who knows someone, who knows someone who got laid off recently, the Ee-con-O-mee is not functioning properly it’s engine is limping to the service station just at the bottom of the J curve. it’s not exactly going past long lines of men with begging bowls and pained faces yet, that’s a dee-presh-on. Ree-Sesh-on just means that we confident consumers are not sure if we’re going to getting a pay check next week, next month, so we’re cautious.

We start to hear stories of businesses that have been sailing too close to the wind running aground. Employees having to be thrown overboard to keep the ship afloat, all sorts of polite terms flood the lexicon, downsizing, re-skilling , whatever. It has to happen to stop the haemorrage of money, the life blood of the company. But the banks decide they’re going ultra conservative and they slip a noose around the money supply, veins and temples start to throb, and the business chokes and soon nobody’s got work, and they ‘re not buying from the sandwich shop on the corner, and everyone gets on the slippery slide. We’re all sliding down out of control, hands up in the air trying to grab at anything but all there is is fresh air and daydreams and a longing for things to be back the way they were. When do we get to the bottom of this slide? When we get there will we be going to fast to survive the impact. Will we all be piled up like bodies at Auschwitz or the twisted crumpled metal of a high speed train wreck. Dreams of proprietors, mangled beyond recognition, their greed and ambition , stamped on from great heights by the omnipotent ee-con-O-mee.

Tim Costello once said- we don’t live in a society any more- we live in an Ee-con-O-mee. Oh me Oh my what is that notice in the mail, the little yellow envelope that looks like a bill – surely they’d tell me face to face, look me in the eye if things were about to come to an end, not this way, not this impersonal ‘Don’t come Monday’ and here’s your cheque..