[nomel]

> Doesn't laying people off sort of contribute to a recession becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy?

Yes, but self preservation of an oncoming reality is usually taken with higher priority that trying to influence a tsunami by removing a cup of water from the ocean.

[asdff]

Isn't it so crazily irrational how our economy works? We have more educated people and more technology with each year, more resources available than ever before in every sector, more and more work being finished on millions of projects, more scientific advances and drugs released and rockets launched and buildings built. But somehow, the machine that was moving along just swimmingly is determined one day by the various talking heads to be doing "bad", and then panic sets in, people fire people and sell stocks and companies fall apart, but its for no good reason. The business cycle is like a flock of pigeons sitting on a telephone line, getting startled by nothing, flying in a circle for a minute, only to sit back on the same telephone line and eventually get startled by something else.