Ballard Camera's going out of business sale is "officially" the "We Quit" sale. It's on tags around the store. Note that this shop is about three or four blocks away from the former location of "Mandrake's Antiques, Custom Furniture and Great Things" which announced their closing with signs reading "Uncle." [flickr.com - Jne.09] 
Store Closings
[flickr.com - Jan.09]
Forbes isn't doing Elisabeth Eaves any favoursThe Recession is Great
by Elisabeth Eaves
[Forbes - Jne.09]
Low prices. Nice people. What's not to like?
This week I refinanced my mortgage at a new, better rate, lowering my monthly expenses with a stroke of the pen. Even as I was doing the paperwork, I had to dodge calls trying to offer me similar and even better rates. If you're creditworthy these days, banks can't shovel money at you fast enough.
This got me thinking about all the other ways in which this recession might be a good thing. Job losses and property devaluations have inflicted much pain, but relentless focus on catastrophe leaves out the flip side of market logic: Prices will tumble until goods find buyers, making it a very good time to go shopping. The recession's benefits also go beyond the purely tangible. Last week I met an artist, Kendrick Mar, who compared the downturn to a "purifying fire." We were talking about the end of high prices for bad work. But there's something else going on too: a burning away of dross in our personal and working lives.
To start with the most literal example, there's a global sale on, so if your own income hasn't plummeted, the getting is good. Interest rates are down. Property prices too. Residential and commercial rents, even in New York City, are down--not, perhaps, south of 14th Street in Manhattan, but elsewhere in the city, mere mortals are negotiating better deals with their landlords, or moving to neighborhoods they had thought were out of reach.
Financial blogger and investment adviser Barry Ritholtz singles out a few more goods that are going cheap: boats, jewelry, Picassos and Monets, second homes. "Make a list of the favorite things that you want, and put in a low-ball offer, and tell people the offer is good for six months," he says. "Your spending habits should be countercyclical; You don't buy, buy, buy when the economy is great."
The downturn has procured a related outbreak of pleasant behavior: Tradesmen, salespeople and restaurant reservationists have lost their standoffish attitude. "Walk into a car dealer now, and that whole veneer of obnoxiousness is gone," Ritholtz says.
GM is going out of business, their bulky, expensive-to-run vehicles to be lost, perhaps, in the purifying fire. But new ventures are starting too. Michael Benstock, CEO of Superior Uniform Group, explains what his company has been up to. Faced with shrinking demand--higher unemployment means less need for uniforms--Superior Uniform laid off staff and posted a loss in the first quarter of 2009.
On the other hand, it's cutting deals with vendors and looking for other companies to buy. "We feel the timing is great for acquisitions," he says. "There are a lot of weakened competitors out there." And after nine decades in the garment trade, the company last year branched out. It needed to outsource more customer service functions to save money and figured other companies did too. So it turned an in-house call center in El Salvador into a separate business, The Office Gurus, that now serves not only Superior Uniform but also other U.S. firms. "Our timing was impeccable," Benstock says, though that was as much because of luck as design. The 150 Salvadorans employed by The Office Gurus have profited.
Then there are the opportunities for change in individual careers. If you still work for a newly downsized company, in all likelihood there is not quite enough labor to go around. That can be exhausting, but it's also a chance to seize new responsibilities. Raises may not come back into fashion for a while, but you can be first in line when they do.
A layoff can be gut-wrenching. But it's also a chance to ask yourself: Were you really happy about the job before it ended? If not, what can you now change that you couldn't before? The Web magazine RecessionWire (subtitle: "The Upside of the Downturn"), whose founders were themselves laid off from other companies, has nursed this idea of reinvention over the last half year, with stories on poverty-provoked spiritual awakenings and musings on next steps. As adults we rarely get to ask ourselves, "What do I want to do when I grow up?" The unemployed may fantasize about financial stability, but the fully employed fantasize about having just a darn minute to think. All the focus on "Plan B" is infectious, causing even the employed to ask themselves, if only as a parlor game, what would I do?
The juiciest personal recessionary benefit, though, may be getting out of things we didn't want to do in the first place by pleading financial hardship. A friend's back-of-beyond wedding? Too expensive. A conference in another city? Company cutbacks say no: Watch the Webcast instead and be home in time for dinner. With so many people out of work, the pressure to keep up financial appearances has disappeared. It's easier than ever to gracefully decline going out for a mediocre $60 meal. We should have better aligned our budgets with our desires all along, but now feel more bold about doing so.
In my neighborhood, the number of empty storefronts has crept upward over the last six months. I wonder if I should be alarmed. It's eerie, but also suggests a neighborhood on pause, taking a breath before chugging along in some new direction. Vanity Fair's James Wolcott, writing recently on the glories of 1970s New York, noted that the population shrank by 10% over the decade. He observed:
"It was hell on the tax base but, for those who migrated to New York and secured a foxhole while the city bled out, terminal conditions weren't all bad. There were upsides to a downward spiral. Having fewer people clogging the scenery aired out the city nicely, opening corner pockets of private and public space where all sorts of termite creativity could take place, and did."
We may be in for more crime and grime, but also more breathing room as some of the hype and waste goes up in flame. Economists are predicting a recovery, anywhere from an optimistic "it's already started" to a cautious 2011. Enjoy the recession while it lasts.
Elisabeth Eaves is a deputy editor at Forbes, where she writes a weekly column.
COMMENTS
"We may be in for more crime and grime, but also more breathing room as some of the hype and waste goes up in flame."
What a ludicrous piece of crap.
Here's hoping the writer never has to face down a mugger or carjacker.
Keep the doors locked, hon!
One thing Elisabeth failed to mention (by design I assume) is that such a deep recession caused by industrial greedheads and their compliant government is also a chance for workers and unemployed people to unite in a cause. There is time and motivation to topple the structure that favors the wealthy and change it to favor the middle and working classes. Check out United Professionals.
I'm glad the recession is working out so well for someone. My spouse lost his GM job in hospitality four months ago. He's spent his entire career managing hotels/resorts and now can't even get an interview for a position at a limited-service property (ie, Hampton Inn). When we relocated for the job he lost, I left my job and didn't return to work because we had a baby and he was working 90-100 hour weeks. Now I'm looking for a job and can't get an interview because I've been a full-time parent for two years! We're both well-educated, hard workers who have lived well within our means (our child's crib and other furniture are hand-me-downs from friends/family; our house is extremely modest but we do have a 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage to pay). We have some savings, but we can't keep going for long with both of us out of work. My spouse has worked hard for over 20 years to build his career, which he loves. Your comment about layoffs is insulting and cruel. Enjoy your good fortune of full employment and a great credit rating for now, because it can end in an instant. Oh, and do our friends who are still employed in hospitality (most of whom have taken pay cuts) a favor--travel and leave big tips.
You are horribly insensitive! People are getting laid off left and right and you go on to cheer about shopping and jewelry. People are struggling to put food on the table and you think this recession is great?? What is the matter with you? What about all of the murder-suicides we are hearing about in the news? People are SUFFERING and you think this recession is great? What is with your "Let them eat cake" attitude? Again, you are horribly horribly insensitive.
Here's why Elisabeth's job isn't safe: The Sun Sets on BusinessWeek, Forbes and Fortune
Bankers and currency speculators have been crooks ever since Jesus threw the money-changers out of the Temple, and probably long before. We should have done much the same, and in fact that's what we ought to be doing now.
What part did Forbes Magazine play in lulling the public into inaction, and thereby paving the way to the current debacle - either by what they printed, or by what they refrained from printing?
Ms. Eaves,
You are a moron. The recession is great? I graduated from college a year and a half ago and have already been laid off from three jobs.
I guess the bright side is how amazing it was that I was able to find and get hired by three different jobs.
Many of my friends who worked very hard during their college years received job offers before they graduated. Most of them were actually laid off before starting one day of work.
I had to move in with my parents so that I could remove rent and utilities from my already growing debt. At 24 I am starting my life $27,000 in debt between student loans and credit cards.
Please stop writing about things that you clearly know nothing about.
This is really a phenomenal article. Sometimes you might forget just how staggeringly out of touch the top 2% of wealthy Americans are with the other 98%.
This is not optimism. This is not a good thing.
Remember - for every good deal you are getting, someone is losing money. People are losing their life savings, their homes, their jobs.
This is nothing short of vulturism. Picking at the carcass of the economy looking for the good tidbits before all the other vultures land and join in.
Elisabeth - you must feel really good about yourself right now. You've got a good job and good credit and the opportunity to profit from the misfortune of others.
Personally, I don't feel so hot. As my assets evaporated, my good credit soon followed. The value of my primary asset - my house, which my family and I enjoy living in - has plummeted. Now my debt to equity ratio is so off that my credit rating is falling fast. Despite having a good six-figure job, I'm talking to a lawyer about bankruptcy.
I just hope when I'm done, I can scrape up enough cash for one of those bargain Monets you're talking about here.
PS - Know anyone that wants a bargain on a few hundred bottles of well cellared California wines? I've got to sell the wine to pay the lawyers so I can keep the house with the empty wine cellar. I have to sell them at a loss, of course, so that bargain hunters like you can enjoy the benefits of the recession.
If you and/or your family members have health or disability issues, you and they are going to suffer big time no matter how thrifty you are.
If you're female and over 55, nobody cares how qualified you are, nor how hard you work, nor how pleasant and helpful you are to everyone. Nobody. They give the good techie jobs to a male under 35. And they give the clerical jobs to somebody who isn't "overqualified." Does Eaves never expect to live past 55?
My finances are already pared to the bone and have been so for a very long time. The recession hit the IT profession before it hit everybody else, and it hasn't been pleasant.
And no, I am not saddled with debt. Due to previous government tax and regulatory policies, the entire industry I was working in came to be outsourced overseas. At my last job, after I was laid off, I applied to work in India at a fraction of my previous salary. If I had been hired at that time, I would have gone, without complaint. But I never got a call back.
About half of my savings was lost in the crash. Evidently, it doesn't help all that much to be frugal unless you are also lucky, or have a lot of inside information. I didn't.
I'm trying very hard to make a career change at my age and it isn't easy, and at the same time, I'm too "overqualified" (i.e., old) to be given a blue-collar or pink-collar job with insurance benefits. Just today I saw a job that I badly wanted given to a much younger male. Despite all my efforts, somehow I wasn't even given an opportunity to apply for that particular job, and I'm feeling absolutely sick about that. And yes, it is a job that I am very much qualified for.
When just about everybody gets into their new, frugal lifestyle, what's the first piece of useless, time-wasting, money-wasting clutter that most people cut from their budgets?
You guessed it - magazine subscriptions!
Here comes the "purifying fire"!
I think it's the retirees I sympathize with the most. Their homes are worth less, their IRAs and 401ks funds are worth less, most are too old to go back to work even if anybody would hire them, and you can't make a dime on savings accounts at today's extremely low interest rates. I must be getting paranoid because what I initially viewed as a disaster brought on by a government asleep at the switch and greed-driven financial "wizards", I'm now beginning to see as possibly a planned occurrence.
WoW!!!!
What a bunch of nonsense. I was laid off from the engineering firm I was working for and I started my own firm with one of the other guys that got laid off the same day I did. It's been difficult and we are barely making it so I guess I can say that I'm not unemployed.
I sold my truck to get out of the $570/mo payment and had to pay $2,000 just to sell it because I could not get what it was worth. I am selling my other vehicle as well so I can be payment free. This must be the glorious fire sale she is referring to. My how wonderful it is to get stuff at such cheap prices from people who just can't afford them anymore! Why just look, America has become a gigantic pawn shop of goodies. How good this is for me, I can even buy a $300,000 home for next to nothing. Isn't this glorious?
Unemployment used to be for those that failed to apply themselves or had drug and alcohol issues. These days the best of the best can find themselves out in the cold. I made it through eight rounds of layoffs before I got the boot so I must have been good at what I do. Ironicaly those who got 86'd before me got 3 months severance but by the time they got to the rest of us, they were out of severance funds. That's special.
This economy is hurting "GOOD PEOPLE" and there is nothing good about that.
You must be kidding me. Perhaps this is a humor piece, and I am not getting it. I do not see how in the long run that this recession is good for anyone -- except maybe a financial vulture.
Most people are struggling to stay afloat, survive, and remain sane; and while times like this allow us to pause and reflect upon the things which matter most to us, it's not what I would say, oh, a likable situation.
Sometimes it is as dire as it looks, and rather than being, what I will graciously say, "eternally optimistic," perhaps it's best to call what we are facing what it really is -- a fine mess 20-plus years in the making, of which we have yet to see the end.
Ms. Eaves,
You're right, I've noticed that it's so much easier to get a good table at a four-star restaurant these days. And if you can't pay for the meal because you've lost your job and your home went into foreclosure you can always try and sneak out through the bathroom window.
P.S. Mortgage rates have gone through the roof in the month or so since you refinanced. I guess those who were less timely are SOL.
This is a vapid, stupid little girl. Like so many others in both the print and broadcast media, she is an icon of the decline and impending death of the so called main stream media.
Steve, can't you afford some adults?
Oh yes, this recession is so wonderful, if you live in a gated community and never leave it (just order the Picasso paintings online). Nice people? I see hateful people along my commute every day, cursing at me and each other in traffic more than ever, and it's obvious at least to me that it is only a matter of time before major spikes in the crime rate begin. But I can buy some million dollar paintings at a discount. Wonderful. My employment situation is unaffected so far and technically the lower prices have improved my standard of living for now, but I believe this country is in a very precarious situation and my fear of civil unrest is a little more significant than my elation over discounted art and jewelry (two things that are ALWAYS a ripoff anyway). JMHO!
An amazingly vapid piece. Anyone who cites NYC in the 70's as some "glory time" has no grasp of the city's reality of the era. I was there and entire areas of the city were effectively out of control (and served as inspiration for the "Death Wish" genre of movies). Have fun at the unemployment office Ms. Eaves and enjoy that "purifying fire" - you may learn that its burns hurt like hell.
Yes, it's "juicy" to be able to "get out of things" we didn't want to do because we're unemployed, underwater and in ruinous debt.
Sorry kids, I didn't want to pay your tuition anyway. Now I can't.
Sorry hon, I didn't want to pay the mortgage this month anyway.
Sorry taxman, I didn't want to pay your inflated bill...
You get the picture, right? I'm so glad the great transfer of wealth from 40 and 50 somethings to 20 and 30 somethings is a cause of some rejoicing on their part. Keep up the good work!
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