Posted 02.06.2009

‘Low Budget’ blues: Deja Vu with the Kinks on the road to recovery

By Mike Cote

As the DJs used to say on top 40 radio—the hits just keep on coming! In January, the nation lost 598,000 jobs as the unemployment rate hit 7.6 percent. Since we entered a recession in December 2007, we’ve lost 3.6 million jobs, the government reported this month.

Read on if you dare. Lyrics courtesy of British Invasion rockers the Kinks, from 1979’s Low Budget album – 30 years later, they fit our current economic woes like a (dusty) glove.

I woke up this morning and what did I see?
A big black cloud hanging over me
I switched on the radio and nearly dropped dead
The news so bad that I fell out of bed

Rise and shine, people. No time to wallow in self pity. But first, a sampling from the doom-and-gloom scorecard:

Circuit City—40,000 jobs gone and 567 storefronts to go empty nationwide as the electronic retailer gives up the ghost to Best Buy.

Caterpillar—20,000 job cuts as Q4 earnings fall 32 percent and construction equipment rusts in place.

Macy’s—7,000 jobs, closing 11 stores, including Westminster and Colorado Springs.

Sun Microsystems: 5,000 to 6,000 – more than more than 200 in Broomfield by this spring.

Home Depot—7,000 jobs and shuttering the smaller chains it owns.

And this just in—General Motors says it will cut 10,000 salaried jobs.

Does your head hurt yet?

Meanwhile, people are taking bets on whether the Rocky Mountain News, the Denver Post —or both —will collapse under mounting debt and declining circulation. And while we’re talking about century-old industrial era businesses tied to cutting down trees, commercial printing company Herschfeld Press shuttered it Denver plant in January and laid off 250 workers.

I’ve always been an optimist, but the headlines—and layoffs hitting friends and family—have been fogging up my rose-colored glasses. Our 21-year-old son reminds me—“It’s not like we’re living in Pakistan”—that we’ll be OK.  But even our new president is saying don’t expect to see an uptick in the economy until next year as he wrangles with Congress over a stimulus package that could be as much as $838 billion.

Got to be a Superman to survive
Gas bills, rent bills, tax bills, phone bills
I’m such a wreck, but I’m staying alive

Brace yourself. It’s time to check in with the Credit Manager’s Index.
 
The seasonally adjusted CMI fell 0.4 percent to a record low of 39.7 in January, its sixth consecutive decline, according to a report released Wednesday. All 30 components in the indexes are below the 50 level signaling economic contraction; 13 are even below 40, suggesting a powerful recession, and 13 are at record lows, the report said.
 
“Much of the recent economic data has been worse than expected, suggesting that the economy’s decline may actually be accelerating,” said Daniel North, chief economist with credit insurer Euler Hermes ACI, who evaluates the data and prepares the CMI report for the National Association of Credit Management, in a prepared statement.

Now I’m calling all citizens from all over the world.
This is Captain America calling.
I bailed you out when you were down on your knees
So will you catch me now I’m falling.

The report contained a glimmer of positive news, however.

 “Over the past few months the indexes have been subject to dramatic, almost sickening declines, like the 11.7 percent drop in manufacturing sales last month,” North said. “This month’s report seems almost sedate by comparison as the worst fall was only 4.4 percent … There might also be the slightest hint of a bottom in the housing market, and there might also be some barely visible cracks in the frozen credit markets.

Kind of like when someone who has been smacking you in the head repeatedly shows mercy with just a slap instead.

“Combine all this with super loose monetary policy, plummeting energy prices and some new ideas from a new administration, and the optimism expressed by a few of the credit managers might be justified,” he said. “Bear in mind, though, that no matter what, it will be rough going until at least the second half of the year.”

Circumstance has forced my hand
To be a cut-price person a low budget land
Times are tough, but we’ll all survive
I just got to learn to economize.

The increasing level of uncertainty has turned us into a nation of sleep-deprived anxiety-ridden basket cases, as Susan Greene chronicled so eloquently Sunday in the Denver Post. My favorite TV commercial these days is for Abilify, a supplementary depression medication that touts how two out of three patients taking antidepressants remain depressed. Escaping reality and getting comfortably numb is a pretty hard trick to pull off these days.

Nervous tension, man’s invention
Is the biggest waste of human energy
Let the tension out, or it will surely kill
And that will be a tragedy

Songs in order of lyrics: “(Wish I Could Fly Like) Superman,” “Catch Me Now I’m Falling,” “Low Budget” and “National Health” by Ray Davies of the Kinks – who have hinted they may reform this year. Other song titles from the Low Budget album: “Pressure,” “Misery” and “A Gallon of Gas.” (That last one would have been more relevant last year when gas spiked to $4.) 

Thirty years later. Same as it ever was. OK, that’s from a different group.

Watch the Kinks performing the song “Low Budget” and a video of ”(Wish I Could Fly Like) Superman” set to clips from Max Fleisher’s Superman cartoons from the 1940s. 

Last updated on Aug 14, 2010 at 08:17 PM