it would have been interesting to see if the media didnt blow everything way out of proportion, would the slowdown be as bad?

like zuki says, joe middleclass like me and most of you guys wont be buying that new flatscreen in the comming months, im stuffing all my cheddar in my mattress.

but if we didnt know that stuff was getting all fucked, id go buy a tv and computer tomorrow, so would the rest of you, that would keep bob the futureshop employee working.

maybe thats my lack of finance education talking tho...

Why blame the media? For the most part (and I'm not talking about Fox or the National Enquirer here), the media simply reports on the facts.

I'm not sure how you can blow 40,000 jobs out of proportion....that's a LOT of jobs...the price of crude dropping to 1/3 of its starting price in a few months is an insane drop. GM shares reaching their lowest levels since the Great Depression is a scary fact, I could go on for hours.

Most of the media simply reports on what's going on...if it's scary, well...don't blame us :) Trust me, we don't sit around the newsroom going "how can we scare the living shit out of people today by blowing something minor out of proportion?"

EDIT: It's usually the experts/politicians we quote who blow things out of proportion and quite frankly it's not like it's our job to make a judgement call and say "wait a minute...he's being a drama queen, we won't quote him."

poor wording on my part. lets just leave "media" out of it and say; what if no one knew but the banks. this all started with a credit crunch, and shit started rolling there.
i still think if everyone just carried on as usual this wouldnt be as bad. but im certainly not gonna risk it and blow my $$ im way to selfish for that

40000 is excessive but there are lots of layoffs that happened in BC just before Christmas. Examples I can think of right now are EA, Nokia, Kodak, etc..

The good times are over and reality is going to hit some people really hard especially in Vancouver when it comes to jobs and businesses. I know so many people who are in so much trouble who made decent money working but decided to ride the over inflated real estate market and started living beyond their means.

I agree.. there are WAAAY to many people in Canada taking our jobs. I`ve been looking for a job for a few weeks now, and it is IMPOSSIBLE to find anything aside from random labour. This coming from someone with actual job skills, not your average HS drop out.

For instance every time I go to Whistler, Grouse Mtn or Banff, all I hear are Aussie accents. Something is wrong with that.

New immigrants = cheap labor.

its a shame the govt allowed foreign workers for the construction sector, those guys could have used that demand to make some money; at least now they would have some savings when they're looking for jobs

^dey Took Our Jerbs?!~

You applied too late?

dey took arr jerrrbs!!!!

http://www.humorscore.com/uploads/th....flv.large.jpg

Are you insane? The whole industry would have been crippled and an average house would have cost a million bucks in Kelowna.

1: There simply weren't enough people in the skilled trades to keep up with Canada's booming housing market
2: To say that they should have left it at that and had them demand more money is insane...people in construction make a pretty penny as it is...what do you want? For a carpenter to make $200 an hour?
3: If the # of skilled tradespeople stayed the same (ie: no foreign labour), do you know how long the wait for a house would have been? Do you know what that would cost builders? I remember when I was living in Grande Prairie (where the construction sector was under insane pressure), the local gov't had to keep throwing money at a project that was only on paper because every month of delay cost them a huge amount of money (price of construction kept going up and up)...therefore, the longer you wait, the more expensive your house/store/community hall was going to cost....

uhhh...welcome to the BC job market? Everyone in Canada wants to live/work in BC.

And you've been looking for weeks...I'm sure the labour market is just BOOMING over Christmas and New Year's...come on, man.

You have a point there...the recession is, in a way, a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more it's talked about, the more people get scared and the less they spend/invest/etc, which, in turn, helps with the economic turndown...

You totally nailed it with that statement right there. I had a big discussion about this exact thing with my co-workers last week and we all agreed that the media has made everyone ridiculously scared. The media thrives on this, and every news channel and newspaper continues to concentrate in the economic downturn any chance they get. Just how the American media spun the whole terrorism angle in the US and the American people fed off of it, that is similar to what is happening here now.

I'm not denying we are in an economic recession, however there is so much uncertainty in the markets because of how the media has portrayed this instability day in and day out. The public doesn't want to circulate cash because they are scared shitless.

We all knew that the housing market was going to crash because it was so overvalued and reaching market saturation. So many townhouses and condos were being built by 18 year old kids who showed up to job sites with a hammer and got hired on the spot with no knowledge whatsoever. Then people got all surprised when the market crashed and housing prices fell? I don't want to sound cocky, but for the past 2 years I was telling people this and so many people refused to believe me on it.

So if we knew that the housing market was going to crash, then why is there such an uproar. Because the media spins things to the extreme and we feed off of it. The media screams how retail sales are down, everyone is spending less, altering their spending habits, then of course you as a consumer are going to feel less optimistic and spend less yourself, even though your job is relatively safe.

What I'm saying is that we are in an economic crisis, but it has been greatly increased and made worse by media hype.

Doesn't this work both ways? Once the market goes up the media will also report that which should get people to spend more.

The media doesn't usually report too much on good news :P

It's not like all of a sudden one day the markets will be better and the media will tell us this. Things are going to be like this for another 6-8 months probably, then in 2010 you will probably see things start to pick up again after some stabilization.

Anyone else in the drafting industry? it's getting quite slow lately...

otherwise, I wouldn't be on RS right now.

woh woh now, lets not blame the media entirely. most of what you read are direct quotes from elected officials and "people in the know"

lets blame Obama for BSing about his hope and change crap but not actually having a plan when he hit the oval office.

lets blame the seperatist liberals blocs and ndps for disrupting our elected government at such a crucial time. maybe if our governmnet acted before the new year we would already be seeing the effects.

lets blame the economist "experts" that the media is turning to for information they are blowing this up as much as everyone else