So the economy has even me shaking in my boots. It is always one of those things that doesn't really bother you until it starts hitting close to home. I havent had much in the way of orders lately so I have been working extra hard at my "real" 9-to-5 job as a manager for a national medical transcription service. Some of our clients are being effected by the economy in that people are just not coming to the hospital for little things. The volume of work is much lower right now that we traditionally see, which means our transcriptionists are running out of work. Transcriptionists work on production, so if they run out of work, they don't earn money.

I have been tightening my budget by cutting down my services on my phone, cable, internet, everything. I'm sure lots of American are doing the same thing, but doesn't that perpetuate the problem? We spend less and this trickles down and shows up as loss of jobs? Sort of a catch-22.

One of my daughters' friends, her father is a physician. They have always been very financially stable, live in a big beautiful house...yeah, I envy them, but they are really down-to-earth friendly people, and face it, they earned what they have. But I found out yesterday that he was laidoff! A doctor, laidoff! What the hacken!

My company did some layoffs in December (how nice, right before the holidays) and now there is rumor that there may be more to come. I sure do hope that help comes soon for our economy.