And if we're anxious in the good times, economic downturn will be so much worse.
Sizwe Nxasana, chief executive of FirstRand, one of South Africa's big four banks, notes that impairments are falling off and the performance of loans to lower-income customers has been "very good" during the downturn.
Ernest M. Ankrim, senior markets adviser at Russell Investments in Tacoma, Wash., said that after stocks soared nearly 70 percent between March 9 and Dec. 31, as measured by the total return of the S.& P. 500, investors were probably betting on an economic rebound that would be as good as the downturn was bad.
IG Metall's demands for job security for VW workers may trigger more strikes later this month.One of the arguments used by unions that lay-offs and wage cuts can do harm as well as good in a downturn by hitting consumption is partly true.
"You have this euphoric feeling when times are good, but the downturns are terrible".
In the few good years before the downturn in 2008, it dropped to 7-8%.
Q Judging by CoStar's stock price and revenue, business has been good, even in the downturn.
But perhaps that is the big idea to come out of the current downturn: that good management is not a matter of adopting short-term fads, but of managers being consistently honest, frugal and prepared over the longer term.
"People complain about the weather and the flying cockroaches, but the latest survey shows that eighty-one per cent say life in Houston is excellent or good, even with the downturn," Klineberg told me.
These meant that businesses entered the 2008-09 downturn in good shape: it was the reforms earlier in the decade, as much as the jobs pact at the start of the recession, that helped industry withstand it.Now some German firms, especially in service industries, are concluding that consensus is no longer delivering the goods.
