Change isn’t always good, in fact at least half of the time it’s bad. The changes we have been seeing since early in 2008 have been very bad for the USA and for all over the world. The economy has tanked in much of the world, largely due to greed on the part of financial institutions who were encouraged to make loans to unqualified borrowers, who offered credit cards with limits higher than common sense and charged usurious rates of interest on the unpaid balances. They also made “negative equity” car loans in which dealers took trade-ins on which there was more owed than their worth, then rolled the “negative” equity into the new car pricing and the bank bought the paper. Most car buyers started out in the hole and it only got worse from there.

The whole economy crisis isn’t confined to one area of the world, or one segment of the economy, it is universal. Government bailouts, take-overs of failed private companies, government loan guarantees, all of these and more are happening in nearly every country in the world, at least the developed countries. George Soros and Warren Buffett, two of the most successful financial wizards in the world, have both decried the governmental attempts to halt inflation and turn around the world economy by throwing money at the problem.

There have been reports that all the indicators point to an end of the current recession. The only problem is that the hole that has been dug by the government spending, particularly in the USA, Germany, France and Great Britain, have added years to the recovery, rather than shortened the term. Our founding fathers, Jefferson and Adams in particular, stated that the government should never spend more money than it can raise in taxes. For more than sixty years, the Federal government has practiced deficit spending until the debt is so large that we are unable to pay the interest on it without more loans. The dollar has been devalued because of our Congress has elected to print more money to cover deficits and budgetary shortfalls. “The Dollar is Doomed” was the headline for an investment newsletter from The Motley Fool, a highly regarded investment advisory group. They quoted a New York Times editorial by Warren Buffett of Berkshire-Hathaway fame. He wrote, "Fiscally, we are in uncharted territory" and concluded that "Unchecked greenback emissions will certainly cause the purchasing power of currency to melt. The dollar's destiny lies with Congress."

It’s not all “doom and gloom” however, change is coming, you can count on it. Sometimes it takes a crisis in order to get people’s attention, to change their spending habits, to make them question their elected leaders and when they are found wanting, elect new ones. Maybe we will be able to look back in a few years and see that a lot of good came out of the worldwide economic collapse. Certainly those business people who learn to survive and even prosper in these times, will be the business leaders of tomorrow. The lessons learned now will only strengthen our economy in the future. That which doesn’t destroy us, serves to make us stronger.

A large part of business survival today is to run lean-and-mean, be more efficient and maximize the utilization of the company’s resources. One of the methods used by smart operators is to oursource many of the “menial” services performed in-house. Sales lead generation and qualification, customer service and follow up, database management are a few of the services that may be outsourced.