All is well in the telecom world. The Dow Jones average is topping 11,000 points, wireless customers are signing up for new services right and left, and the wireless pie is growing.
However, Robert Reich, former U.S. Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration from 1993-1997, said he felt the need to point out a few potential storm clouds brewing on the horizon, lest people get too comfortable. Reich spoke at the spring Telecommunications Resellers Association meeting last week in San Diego.
Storm Cloud No. 1. The U.S. consumer.
While the nation’s economy paints a pretty rosy picture, the economy in the rest of the world is shaky; Japan is in a liquidity trap. No one in that country is buying because they assume the prices will continue to drop.
Southeast Asia is still in trouble, and Germany has an unemployment rate of more than 10 percent. If Brazil’s economy goes south, so does the rest of South America. In short, the only place the economy is good is in the United States, Reich said, because the U.S. consumer is spending, spending, spending. The U.S. consumer is the locomotive fueling global growth.
If the U.S. consumer stops spending, the global economy will be hurt. And U.S. consumer bankruptcies are at an all-time high.
Storm cloud No. 2. The lack of talented people.
No matter how much consolidation occurs in the business world, there will always be a need for knowledge brokers, Reich contends. For example, someone wanting to invest in the stock market may not use a stockbroker to make the physical trades, but the broker can advise the clients on stocks to buy and sell, depending on that person’s risk aversion.
However, in order to be in the knowledge-brokering business, you need talented people. And they increasingly are in short supply.
Storm Cloud No. 3. The Feb. 29, 2000, problem.
The Y2K problem may not affect us Jan. 1, but can we trust computer programmers who didn’t think to remember there is a Feb. 29 that year?
