I was amazed myself, Chris, when I read the article about the husband and wife that sold their house, moved into rented accommodations, and bought gold. The article positioned this as some sort of “smart” or advanced thinking move. Historically, owning your primary residence has always been a good idea- but people start doing stupid things out of panic and confusion.

I suspect that, in the grand scheme of things, resource-rich areas will continue to do well. Oil prices have dropped, for example, but I would be surprised if they didn’t rebound above $100 a barrel within the next six months or so. Alberta should do well in that circumstance, so long as Ontario doesn’t rape Alberta’s profits to support its dwindling manufacturing sector.

The biggest problem in the next little while will be businesses having difficulty getting development loans. The banks, having done stupid things like loaning money to people without completing credit checks, will now stop loaning money to going concerns in a sort of knee-jerk reaction. That will stifle growth.

As for upward mobility- frankly, I’ve always thought upward mobility was more a state of mind than an economic condition. People who are desperate for the next promotion, the next raise, will make that their first priority and will generally figure out a way to get what they want just by sacrificing more of the rest of their lives and ethics. Folks who work to live, rather than live to work, will generally not “move up the corporate ladder” or whatever you want to call it, regardless of the economic circumstances.

What will suffer is those annual raises “the rest of us” look forward to. But getting a 2.5% raise isn’t upward mobility, and I’ve grown used to not getting one anyway. Most corporations have been “clawing back” such increases for years. I could see some sectors even “rolling back” salaries: that would be bad news for a lot of folks. None of this, though, is new: even when the economy is doing great, most corporations still do their best to squeeze their staff as much as they can. Now the executives can hide behind the “economy” as an excuse.

On a lighter note, we have your more pressing doomsday scenarios. The flu will probably kill a few million, but the asteroid strike could, with a bit of luck, wipe out a billion or two. The dust from the impact will cause a mini-ice age, halting global warming, and the decrease in pollution as billions permanently stop consuming should help stabilize the climate in the future. And once things sort of stabilize, there will be plenty of job opportunities for those of us who remain: see, it will all work out just fine! 😉