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Why this tech recession will be different

Posted by George Colony on October 26, 2008

Quickly: For tech, this recession will be different than 2001-2003

Content: I'm not an economist. But I've been present for a bunch of recessions and watched how technology markets survived. And I spend a lot of my time talking to management teams at large companies about economic conditions and their businesses. Here's my view of the effects of this recession on technology. If you want Forrester's formal view of the recession, check out Andy Bartels' report, What the Financial Crisis Means to the Tech Market.

Here's my take:

1) Tech will be down, but not out. 2001-2003 was a tech depression. Spending stopped, projects were canceled, excess inventory flooded the market destroying pricing. Cisco lost half a trillion dollars of market cap. Why? Tech had a long way to fall. Tech spending in 2000 in the U.S. was up 12% -- there was fluff and fat everywhere. When the bubble burst, the fall was precipitous. But tech spending was up only 6% from 2006 to 2007. Users of technology are far more disciplined and have cut out the nonsense. So yes, growth will slow, but it won't fall off a cliff.

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Hal destroys Wall Street

Posted by George Colony on October 3, 2008

Hal Quickly: automation is outstripping human common sense.

Content: Two cases are relevant. 1) Google's dissemination of old United Airlines news resulting in a precipitous UAL stock slide, and 2) exotic, computer-generated financial instruments leading Wall Street into fatal waters.

What happened? In the first case, a system unchecked by human beings made a mistake resulting in massive damage to an already fragile public company. But that's nothing compared to the wreckage caused by the inscrutable mortgage securities.

My father was a part-time banker who loved to extol the virtues of what he called "small town banking." It was all pretty simple: his bank took deposits and loaned that money to people whom the bank officer had gone to high school with. This was important, because bankers are not the highest IQ animals on the savanna -- they needed good doses of trust and information to sleep at night.

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