Microsoft to cut up to 5000 jobs

renthor said:

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.

Agreed, but the thing that i know pisses my family off is the fact that bush has left office, yes he went and got 700 billion or whatever it was to help, now obama has to clean it up. In a way its a horrid time for him to come in BUT from what i can tell people have confidence in him so i think he will do fine. It amazes me that pepole see these things and do nothing about it. We have a PM who got the job by default, theres no way he would have won an election, but then look at the alternatives we all have. There all as bad as one another.

shezzuk1 said:

I can't really see Obama making any difference whatsoever, and having Brown as Pm is the worst single thing to ever happen to our country...him and Darling will make more of a mess of it. The debts now are at £12,000 per family and he's driving us into more debt. Bring in a right wing government asap imo.

Yeah very true mate, but look at it this way. You have Labour, whom yes in my opinion really foobared it all up. But look at the alternatives? Conservative? Give me a break. Whomever is in charge is still going to have to sort this mess out. But in the end it will be the same people who always do - us.
Obama will make things better im sure. He just needs congress to let him get on with it.