A Stern Glance

“I am not interested in the Doom and Gloom purveyors. Thanks any way!” was the response we received last week from a reader of A Stern Glance  to the discussion of the most recent unemployment data disseminated by the U.S. Department of Labor.

It’s not, by any stretch of the imagination, a comment we considered not at all nasty, or even for that matter, a criticism; simply an opinion or personal position. However, we did find it remarkably telling as it was sent by a prominent local commercial real estate firm staffed by executives “with more than 100 years of experience” in the aggregate and a list of prominent local and national clients. It is clearly an eminently successful enterprise. From the comment, as well as the gentleman’s acknowledgement,  his company is also a severe follower of the Positive Mental Outlook (PMA) genre of business.
We’re believers in Tom Hopkins, billed frequently as “The World’s Greatest Sales Trainer,” and one of the nation’s leading proponents of Positive Thinking in business. However, we’ve been around long enough to know that to think positively about the current recession can only be done when one has all the facts at hand; understands the ramifications of what we see as a brutal economic downturn and, most importantly, has the tools to provide the best possible opportunity to mitigate those negative ramifications for the client or customer, as well as his or her own business.

The most important of those tools, in our opinion, is information: clear, concise information that’s drawn from resources that as close to being unimpeachable as possible. And that is the essence of why we’ve disseminated A Stern Glance for the past five years: To provide business with news we believe it needs to make prudent decisions in any economic environment.

If a business, large or small, does not factor the economy into its strategy and understand how to operate in a range of economic conditions, at best its results will never achieve maximum potential, and frequently, the business will have an even greater potential for failure: Surprises will do that.

While we’re old newspaper guys, and would very much like to tell you to read media accounts of economic developments; because we are ex-reporters, you’re far better served if we suggest that you read the original data, which A Stern Glance provides.

We’d be remiss here if we didn’t point out that we called the current economic environment a recession a few months back and early last year stated categorically that we were headed into such an environment. (We are, after all, a strategic communications firm, so we will toot our own horn from time to time.) Yesterday (March 13), The Wall Street Journal issued the following alert for a story that appears today:

The U.S. has finally slid into recession, according to the majority of economists in the latest Wall Street Journal economic-forecasting survey, a view that was reinforced by new data showing a sharp drop in retail sales last month.

The survey, conducted March 7 through 11, marked a precipitous shift to the negative from the previous survey conducted five weeks earlier. For example, the economists now expect nonfarm payrolls to grow by an average of only 9,000 jobs a month for the next 12 months–down from an expected 48,500 in the previous survey. Twenty economists now expect payrolls to shrink outright. And the average forecast for the unemployment rate was raised to 5.5% by December from 4.8% in the previous survey.

Las Vegas is not, as we’ve pointed out, immune. Resorts on the Strip are laying off; unemployment exceeds the national level; gasoline is fast approaching $4.00 a gallon. Need we say more on the analysis side?

There are ways to manage through a recession, even a period of stagflation, which an increasing number now believe may be upon us. The first rule, to lift a line from The Godfather: “Keep your prospects close and keep your clients (customers), closer.”  I also invite you read “The Recession and Strategic Communications.”