Just another sign of the ailing economy, here's to a speedy (though doubtful) recovery, and that all those laid off can find new jobs (good luck!).

garysgold said:

Microsoft has said it will cut up to 5,000 jobs over the next 18 months, including 1,400 immediately.

The firm also reported a net profit of $4.17bn (£3bn) for the three months to 31 December, down 11% on last year and less than analysts' expectations.

Microsoft added it was "no longer able" to give a profit and revenue outlook for the fiscal year amid current volatile market conditions.

Shares in Microsoft fell 7.9%, dragging Wall Street lower.

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They are still making a big profit? Only down 11%?

I hope that we recover before we fall into complete depression. I haven't been able to find a job in my area for a year now. Everyone has been laying off. Even McDonalds, and Wal-Mart (who is always hiring) is not allowed to start hiring until March 2009.

garysgold said:

Microsoft has said it will cut up to 5,000 jobs over the next 18 months, including 1,400 immediately.

The firm also reported a net profit of $4.17bn (£3bn) for the three months to 31 December, down 11% on last year and less than analysts' expectations.

Microsoft added it was "no longer able" to give a profit and revenue outlook for the fiscal year amid current volatile market conditions.

Shares in Microsoft fell 7.9%, dragging Wall Street lower.

More

this economy is a slap on the face of bloody bush and everyone who believed in him . even if you try to predict the future no good predictions are coming out. peaple loosing their jobs and are forced to default their credit cards , mortgage and other bills . hope we get something good out of OBAMA.

Hello bossmayank619,

There is plenty of blame to go around.

Thank you.
Gary

bossmayank619 said:

this economy is a slap on the face of bloody bush and everyone who believed in him . even if you try to predict the future no good predictions are coming out. peaple loosing their jobs and are forced to default their credit cards , mortgage and other bills . hope we get something good out of OBAMA.

Well to be fair it was not exactly bush's fault. It was the greedy middle men and the sub prime mortgages that they mis sold. People got laid off they could not afford there home repayments and before you know it, recession. Then some wise clown at HSBC bought all this debt off the american banks, thinking that they could make a killing and boy were they wrong all this began the UK falling down.
Funny though really, house prices are falling so fast now is the time to buy, but no bank will give you a mortgage. So you resorted to going to so called 'mortgage brokers' who will find you one. and what do you get? A UK sub prime mortgage market. My brother in law has just explained it all to me ( its more detailed really then my post but thats the jist of it) he used to work for HSBC America, he had a feeling somthing bad was going to happen so he left and went to texaco. Quite lucky really :)

damoh said:

Well to be fair it was not exactly bush's fault. It was the greedy middle men and the sub prime mortgages that they mis sold. People got laid off they could not afford there home repayments and before you know it, recession. Then some wise clown at HSBC bought all this debt off the american banks, thinking that they could make a killing and boy were they wrong all this began the UK falling down.
Funny though really, house prices are falling so fast now is the time to buy, but no bank will give you a mortgage. So you resorted to going to so called 'mortgage brokers' who will find you one. and what do you get? A UK sub prime mortgage market. My brother in law has just explained it all to me ( its more detailed really then my post but thats the jist of it) he used to work for HSBC America, he had a feeling somthing bad was going to happen so he left and went to texaco. Quite lucky really :)

i agree my sister use to work in HSBC Backoffice and she told me the same thing now that the atmosphere in hsbc is bad even before the recession is declared but i guess the economist should have done something and the situation should have been so bad. anyway i am no economist so i will not understand the cons and pros of this economy. only thing i know we require some real hard and smart decisions to fix the whole problem.

To be fair, although the housing market crash is what (for better or worse) alerted a lot of people to the problem, it is really only part of the problem. People who have been paying attention to this stuff have been warning us this was going to happen for years. Well before last year's housing/mortgage crash.

The larger problem (put extremely simply) has been the shift of focus from the manufacturing sector to the financial sector. Once you read past all of the naysayers and doomsayers, one can realize that we've gone through many market shifts before (yes, perhaps this is more of major one than we've experienced recently) and given some time, and with the right people in the right places (cross your fingers for Obama to get this right), the cyclic effect will push all of this back up. But the blame does not lie on any one person, even Bush.

We've recovered before, we can recover again.