"Starbust"

Businesses everywhere keep firing workers and going bankrupt. In the case of these huge companies, it was entirely predictable. Past certain point, it just isn't feasible to maintain a level of profits that will allow a business to continue. Subscribing to the "greed is good" thesis by Gordon Gecko - the character from the Oliver Stone film Wall Street - too may companies around the world thought that growth was infinite, so they kept opening branches or stores, hiring more personnel and running into debt recklessly. Nobody foresaw a very simple reality: if people have very little or no money to spend, there go your customers.

In a sense, all that growth was artificial and unreal; it was unsustainable in the long run. There are just so many $5 cups of coffee that you can drink; none when you're unemployed.

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