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BY MITCH MAC DONALD, GROUP EDITORIAL DIRECTOR
one day closer to recovery?
HOW LOW WILL IT GO? THAT’S THE QUESTION ON EVERYbody’s mind right now. If you’re like most of us, probably a day
hasn’t passed since mid-September when you didn’t take part in
at least one conversation that centered on the state of the global
economy and ultimately included that question.
It’s been about four months since it first became painfully
obvious that the global economy hadn’t just started sliding
downhill, it had essentially fallen through a metaphorical trap-door. But here we are in the first days of the new year, and we’re
still trying to figure out when the bottom will even be in sight.
That’s partly because we have so little to go on. The pundits
have offered virtually nothing in the way of guidance or predictions. And unless your age is nearing the triple-digit mark, your
only experience with a financial meltdown of
this order has come from reading history
books, not the latest headlines.
At this point, nobody’s holding out much
cause for optimism. For example, when
asked at a recent industry conference to
point to one good thing about this historic
global economic downturn, market analyst
John Larkin of Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., who is
typically ready with a thoughtful and articulate response, had to pause. The audience
could almost hear the wheels turning in his
head. A few seconds later, he responded,
“Well, I guess we could say that if there is
any good news, it’s that every day we are in
this situation, we are one day closer to being
out of it.”
So there it is—perhaps the closest thing we have to a silver lining in this very dark economic cloud. That goes a long way
toward explaining the wave of pessimism that’s engulfing businesses from one end of the Earth to the other.
The readers of DC VELOCITY are no exception. As reported by
Editor at Large James Cooke in our annual Economic Outlook
report (see page 32), our readers, who represent a cross-section
of the highest-ranking logistics professionals in the country, say
things look very bleak indeed. Nearly eight out of 10 readers
polled indicated that they were either pessimistic about the economic outlook for 2009 or were uncertain where the economy
was headed. When asked about the U.S. economy’s growth
prospects for 2009, just 3 percent said they expected robust
growth. (We are still trying to find them to determine if they are,
in fact, under the care of Elvis Presley’s pharmacist.)
Let’s remember, though, that economic
trends can only be seen in hindsight. We can’t
really tell what’s happening until several
months after whatever happened took place.
Consider that last year at this time, the cover
of this very magazine carried a headline that
asked: “Is a recession on the way in ’08?”
What’s ironic about that headline is that what
we were suggesting as a likelihood was already
a reality. As we have since learned, the U.S.
economy has officially been in
recession since December 2007.
That means that when we published that issue, we were
already two months into the
downturn.
Even so, we got a lot of flak
for that headline—not only
from readers and advertisers,
but also from members of our
own staff. Many thought we
were being overly pessimistic.
The economy could just as easily turn up in 2008 as turn
down, they argued. We didn’t
disagree; we simply felt the
indicators pointed down, not up.
Unfortunately, as we all know now, we were
right.
That brings us back to Larkin. If indeed the
best thing we can say about the current state
of economic affairs is that each day that passes brings us one day closer to recovery, at least
we have the consolation of knowing that we
have something like 441 days of downturn
already behind us. That’s my story, and I’m
sticking to it!
