Brenda and I decided to buy a house in Norcross.

It had only been five years since our bankruptcy, but we didn't have any debt to speak of, and we both had good jobs. We had a good family income, and a stable marriage.

By insuring ourselves against defaulting on the mortgage, we were able to get a VA loan on a FHA foreclosure, or an FHA loan on a VA foreclosure, for a low down payment.

We were homeowners again, and could deduct our mortgage interest from our income taxes.

Not long after we bought the house, Brenda got laid off.

She went on unemployment and looked for another job.

The job market was already beginning to get soft, in some sectors. This exerted a downward pressure on wages.

What happened to Brenda is the company her company bought a big piece of complicated, expensive equipment from laid the support staff off, and didn't support it.

They had no technical training, no accurate and complete technical manuals, no field engineers to answer questions.

If it broke, you couldn't fix it.

If you were trying to install it, and had questions, you couldn't get answers.

Brenda couldn't install the equipment she'd been hired to install. Couldn't run the program she had been hired to manage.

They did not let the person who bought an expensive, complicated piece of equipment from a company that was going to lay off its support staff go. He was a suit.

They laid Brenda off.

So Brenda was competing for a job with all the technical trainers, technical writers, field engineers, and program managers who were being laid off.

It cascaded.

It never got up to the suits, but it hit the professional people hard. The people doing, or not doing, the work.

Every time you downsize, you save the cost of the people who were doing the work, but nobody does the work, and the work was necessary, or you wouldn't have been paying people to do it.

That's the dirty secret of American industry.

The people who are doing the downsizing have no idea what needs, and doesn't need, to be done.

For example, downsizing them would be a cost-savings.

Look what administrators in HMOs have done for health care in America.

They have made it profitable. For everyone except doctors, nurses, and patients.

They've made it profitable for investors. And for suits.

Company men. Destaffers.

They destaff the wrong people.

Anyhow, we might not have qualified for the loan on just my salary, but we could handle the payments on just my salary, so everything worked out okay.

As long as I stayed employed. And Brenda got another job, even at a lower salary.

I spent $5,000 on a new furnace.

I thought we were going to stay there, so I bought a good one.

Brenda got another job. At a lower salary.

A much lower salary.

What if I got laid off?

They'd stopped giving us bonuses.

They were poor-mouthing on our annual raises.

They had stopped hiring.

I was not optimistic.

I had been here before.