bad news and worse

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Even hiding your money under the mattress seems unworkable these days. After all, the hoard would simply shrink there -- though perhaps at a slower rate than in the stock market. "The light at the end of the tunnel" and "it's always darkest before the dawn" ring increasingly hollow. Sometimes today's bad news is just a precursor of worse news tomorrow.

-- A report from the World Bank suggests that preparing for worse news is sensible. Times ahead could easily be worse than the meltdown of 2008.

-- And for those who live in the United States, there is data suggesting that there is meat on that worse-news bone. During the past decade, the U.S. has lost more than a quarter of its high-tech manufacturing jobs.

My older son is studying computers in college. My suggestion -- which he pooh-pooh's -- is that he should learn how to FIX computers. People unwilling to pay for snazzy web sites are always willing to pay when the screen goes black. And as someone whose college debt makes college seem a dubious proposition (a college degree for what?), his having a decent trade strikes me as sensible, if not exactly glorious.
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