And again, add to all that our favorite dynamic duo in Washington, along with the general angst that our recent election caused, and you've got the makings of a mess. Remember, these are the folks that told California, home of our largest single economy, that the state was on its own when it came to dealing with the crippling power shortages it was facing. There's something just plain wacky about two big-oil guys telling people in the high-tech capital of the world that they, literally, won't be able to fuel their growth.

Finally, add to that a generally unpleasant and overlong snowy season in the Northeast, and you've got the winter of our discontent.

But is it a recession? Are we doomed? Are we going to repeat ol' pappa George Bush's dog days?

Frankly, I don't think we're doomed. I think it's possible to pull out of this general economic malaise. I think we can do it soon. I think we have to. One of the sad truths about a recession is that you don't get a recession unless everybody plays along and buys into the fear.

Moving forward as a populace
What's cool about our current condition is that the cure is, as the Eagles say in their great song of the same name, "Get over it."

There are a couple of simple things we all need to do to get over it. First, we've got to stop this doom and gloom shit. I'm sorry about using the bad words here, but I'm going to be emphatic for a minute. There's just no reason for BusinessWeek, to print in 128 point type, "How BAD will it get?" on the cover of their magazine. There's just no good reason the Industry Standard has to devote prime real estate on its home page to a "Layoff Tracker" and a "Flop Tracker."

We may be in a slow period, but screaming about it is only going to make it worse.

Second, chill out on the layoffs. There's no question it's a good idea to look at how you run your company and what your people do. But when you see companies like Disney laying off 4,000 workers in a shot, Nortel Networks laying off 15,000 people, and Procter & Gable laying off 9,600 people, you've got to ask, "What are they thinking?"

Was anyone actually paying attention when these people were hired?

Third, be aware that for much of the country, this has been a completely zany winter season. We had the nutty election fiasco, we had the fake storm of the century fiasco, and we had the dot-com fiasco. The good news is that our economy is structurally sound. We're just having a bad hair winter.

Get over it. Stop whining. When it finally gets warm and nice outside, go to the beach. Trust me, everything will look a lot better when we all stop crying wolf and we're able to see a blue sky.

Before I close, I'm going to make two final comments. As I said, back in 1994 I wrote a wonderful book on reinventing your company in tough times. It's called The Flexible Enterprise: How to reinvent your company, unlock your strengths, and prosper in a changing world. It's still available from Amazon, and if you want to get your own business back on track, you should read it. It's way past my royalty earn out, so I'm not going to see a cent if you buy the thing. It's just good, and it'll help. So get it.