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"Thank God, the turn is at hand."

I like your phrase, and I hope you are right. At my own little office I currently have so many unused workstations, telephones, offices and desks, it is horrid. We've only actually cut one person, reduced another's hours, and two gone voluntarily are not being replaced. We were going gang-busters in 2000.

Many local factors contributed to our decline, not least of which was the death of one of the partners, about 2 weeks before 9/11, it was from his office that we watch the towers attacked across the Hudson River. I will never recover from that, ever. We lived off our A/R last year. Now we are really starting to feel the pinch. And others are too. I have vendors I pay regularly and timely calling for money. This is what you do when your cash flow stinks, you don't call the dead-beats (why would they pay you now, when they don't really want to pay you at all), you call your good payers, try and get the $ a little sooner.

I certainly hope the turn is at hand, because if not the cliff is dead ahead.

I, too have endured such times in the early 80s and can only say that I have personally experienced every doubt and ultimate loss of (self) confidence which you describe.

But every economic swing carries inchoat the very forces which will slow it and ultimately return it. We have the nimblest big economy there is and a lot of smart people have been making adjustments just like you have described you have made. Cummulatively, they will have their effect. We have a tax cut, albeit small and delayed. Oil is coming down, albiet slower than we want. Inventories are down. Productivity is improving as a new wave of technology takes effect.

Unless we get dragged down by a world wide deflationary spiral, and we will be the last to go down, our economy will revive. I think the bad news is out. Now it gets better.