Young Brennan on the Moor

It's Tuesday evening and Janett's out, so I'm listening to the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem.

My thought was to share with you some recent experience. I do accounting temporary work. My last three assignments provide an interesting perspective on the state of our economic society.

1) A developer/manufacturer of acoustic devices. Probably started out 40 years ago making hearing aids. Now sells a couple hundred million dollars worth of miniature devices to fit in headphones, but a lot of high tech stuff. The founder died 8 or 9 years ago and his wife inherited. She tried to manage the business in accordance with his wishes but found it beyond her abilities and (perhaps influenced by the fact that she'd walk away with a lot on money) sold the firm to a British investment company which is in the final stages of shipping the whole business (there were three plants originally employing maybe a thousand people) to the Peoples Republic of China.

2) An E-commerce business selling sports/entertainment tickets grossing maybe a hundred million a year, employing a couple hundred including a lot of programmers and software development people. Recently they leased a third office site to hold the overflow from the first two sites; meanwhile they're building a three-story home office building. The employees are probably hoping the boss takes the company public and offers them options.

3) Just started - an importer/wholesaler of consumer products. The owner is an idea man with a Chinese surname who develops product concepts, then contracts with plants in China to produce the goods which the company markets to retailers in the US, including you-know-who. This company has grown about five-fold in the last seven years.

OK, it's just one guy's experience, anecdotal in nature to be sure. But as for me, I think I see a pattern here and it doesn't look good.