Get an engineer for a year or two at the cut-rate price and once they've gotten ingrained into your org and code base they'll head off when (if?) the economy recovers. Not very forward-thinking.
Maybe, but right now it's too early to tell and a move like that, to take advantage of developers during this time, will hurt them nonetheless. I personally have been keeping track of companies I've applied for to see how they treat people during the worst times, right now, and I won't work for a company like that. I'm sure there are other developers who would do the same.