Legal Commentary

CNN's Zakaria: Perfect storm hitting U.S. economy

By Patrick J. Lamb

You can read an interesting interview with CNN's Fareed Zakaria here.  I was interested to see his use of the "Perfect Storm" metaphor to describe what is going on with the economy.

CNN: How bad is the U.S. economy right now?

Zakaria: It almost looks like a perfect storm. We have a collapsing housing market, weak consumer spending, and a credit crisis that has kept banks reluctant to extend credit easily. Plus, food and fuel prices are soaring.

* * * *

CNN: So, we're not past the worst yet?

Zakaria: Look I'm not a trained economist but I had three of the best on the show this week -- Larry Summers, [Treasury Secrtary for Bill Clinton] Jeff Sachs [Director of UN Milennium Project], and Paul Krugman [Op-Ed columnist on economy for New York Times].

And they all agreed that it was unlikely that we had worked through most of the problems in the economy. They felt we seemed to have avoided the worst of the financial crisis but that now the real economy was beginning to show the signs of pain -- housing was going to keep declining, the consumer would scale back and companies would cut their workforces.

Six months ago, I used the same metaphor when I asked "Will The Perfect Storm Fundamentally Alter The Foundation Of The Profession?"  As the economy continues to decline, watching how law firms respond  is becoming a spectator sport --check out this post in Above The Law as an example.  One thing I haven't seen?  Firms lowering their rates.  Or their business models.

Full post as published by In Search of Perfect Client Service on July 11, 2008 (boomark / email).