A big problem for some time was resume harvesters.  Indian firms for instance were gathering resumes and basing their own on what Americans were putting down.  BTW- the Indian economy is not doing well right now.

  Well if you want to make an informed decision as to what skills, etc. to invest in these aspects are important.  At the individual level perhaps not as much as some would have you believe.  As far as what the MSM says, they were singing a different tune as little as 6 months ago.  Greenscam and Big Ben have, only until very recently, supported the idea that the American economy was going strong.  The problem is really quite severe.  Weve had a number of major bank failures recently.  The way America has been working for the past 30 years is, where the credit goes, the payoffs go.  The credit markets were liquid in RE for the past 10 years, but not anymore.  If you are in the position to do business without need of credit in a tight market, you're going to win big.  But to summarize, the MSM wonking on the dismal state of the economy are not overblown.  I don't take what they say to heart, I've been saying quite publicly that we would be having a housing crisis for years (and theres quite a few posts of mine to prove this).  The MSM is not going to say anything until they've got their money down- notice the run up in commodities? ;)   jmz