Originally Posted by
cfdh_edmundo
The company I'm at (Investment Company in London) have just said there will be redundancies after saying previously that all employees would be safe and savings could be generated in other areas.
I would imagine there will be massive job losses all across Western Europe (indeed most of the world); in terms of the cross-sector economy this is snowball that is only just starting to roll. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see unemployment* levels at around 15-20% through 2009. Countries that lack resources or manufacturing and have economies heavily dependant on services will be very badly hit (e.g. Ireland / UK). The UK is in a very bad way, there is a massive government debt and I just don't see how / where the repayment means will come from. In the very long run think Ireland might be safe simply because, as we're in effect part of the Eurozone, it's a big enough zone to weather the storm and the industrial make up for the Eurozone is sufficiently diverse to survive. I think the UK will slip into the economic abyss and I just don't see where it will recover... so much of its economy is dependent on Banking / Finance and the economy is too big to change it or restructure it.
Whatever you say about history etc, I feel sorry for a lot of people over here in the UK. Lots of people I know, good decent people, have kids and mortgages and they are going to go under - houses will be re-possessed and families will be out on the streets. In socio-political terms I really do wonder where the UK is heading...
Sorry to be a merchant of doom, but in Western Europe I don't think we'll see the upside for at least two years (and realistically I'd say 5).
*by this I mean unemployment that does not include incapacity etc.