patrick.net

In fact, I wonder if the US of A would be a much better place if children did not learn in school that the purpose of debate is for someone to win it, rather than using it as a process for finding or teaching the correct answer.

Huh? The purpose of a debate is not about winning nor about finding the correct answer. It is about making a point.

There is no such thing as a "correct" answer. And "winning" is worthless without gains.

Merry Christmas. God bless America.

MST,

>>Why are They (Demopubs and Remocrats) letting illegal immigration happen?” ‘Cause they need new pyramid base, of course!

Right on target,. Could not agree more..

In fact, the US is the biggest pyramid scheme in history.

The problem with this country is that every 2nd generation Tom, Dick and Harriet have only one aspiration, which is to sit on their fat ass and own real estate that they rent out to new immigrants, who also do all the real work.

In the big scheme of things, why do economies always have to grow? Answer: To keep the pyramid scheme going.

And why do we need business cycles? Because exponential growth cannot be sustained and we need to reset and re-flatten the (bottom of the) pyramid every few years.

Peter P,

You may have made my point :-)

Merry Christmas.

why do economies always have to grow?

Yeah, we need to come up with a new economics on this board.

I am still not clear what is wrong with pay-as-you-go finiancing like social security, except that it doesn't work with a declining population. Does the Untied States have a declining population? It is like just-in-time production, but only with money.

Social security is one big ponzi scheme.

I am against free health care for anyone over 70. Life beyond 70 is a luxury and if old people want to live, they better pay up.

How about this fair plan:

Anyone can withdraw from his retirement account at any time. However, from that point on, free health care, including critical emergency care, will cease to be free.

I don't think I am saying that the state needs to pay for health care or health insurance for everyone. But government is in a good position to broker a more reasonable arrangement, even if people had to pay in and pay copays and all of that. Because the current system is messed up, inefficient, expensive, and unkind.

The biggest problem I see is the preexisting condition bit. Take, for example, cancer. That tends to be a one-in-three proposition, and it is survivable, and it does not always strike the old and non-productive. And you can't always blame people for getting cancer--sure, it will probably get you if you smoke two packs a day, but it might still get you if you never smoke, sleep well at night, go to the gym every day, and eat organic food. But try getting solo health insurance after that diagnosis. Nope, if you get really sick with anything just once, you will definitely have to work for an employer who provides group insurance for the rest of your life, or you will have to find a way to become wildly wealthy and pay your own way--because paying your own way will cost a lot more. This restriction on access to insurance, which becomes a restriction on access to healthcare, is bad for business insofar as it prevents workers from moving around freely and starting new enterprises.

As for the robotics chick, her tiny start-up does not provide group health insurance, and she has a pre-existing condition, so solo insurance would not happen for her. So the start-up gig has to be a side gig.

Eliza,

Right on. Good analysis.

The bond ratings agencies (Moody, S&P, etc) are exactly the form of private guard that we are talking about

Quite the contrary! The bond rating agencies are a government sponsored cartel and you’re right about how miserably they failed, proving my point.

We certainly do not need specialized bond rating agencies. Investors should be responsible for the research. So much for public good.

Rating agencies are over-rated. Haven't we seen enough to know that supposedly "safe" investments (Fanron, AAA MBS, Madoff, etc.) are the most prone to failures?

Perhaps prudent speculation will turn out the be the only safe strategy.

Not investment advice

Big Madoff Investor Found Dead
French Financier in Apparent Suicide in New York Office; Fund Lost $1.5

The co-founder of an investment advisory firm that lost $1.5 billion in the Madoff scandal was found dead Tuesday in an apparent suicide in his Manhattan office, police said.

Thierry Magon de La Villehuchet, 65 years old, was pronounced dead about 8 a.m. New York City police said they believe the death to be a suicide but were awaiting results of an autopsy to be completed Wednesday.

Workers discovered Mr. de La Villehuchet's body about 7:30 Tuesday morning at the Madison Avenue offices of Access International Advisors, police said. Mr. de La Villehuchet had lacerations on his arms, and police

NJ state senator loses $1.3M life savings
Wednesday December 24, 11:03 am ET

New Jersey state senator loses $1.3 million life savings in Madoff scheme

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) -- New Jersey Sen. Loretta Weinberg's nest egg had grown to about $1.3 million before investments with disgraced Wall Street investor Bernard Madoff wiped her out.

The 73-year-old grandmother believed she was financially secure until recently, when an accountant phoned a relative to say the Weinberg family's investments -- including the senator's and those of many in her family -- were now worth nothing.

The Weinbergs, like New Jersey Sen. Frank Lautenberg's charitable foundation and scores of others, were victims of a multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme masterminded by Madoff

Why do Madoff investors all seem to have European-sounding names?

Wonder if we will see some sort of government bailout for Madoff "victims."

Let the Madoff victims eat cake. They made their investments on their own free will. They are now on their own. Financial Darwinism makes the world better.

L’Oreal Heiress Bettencourt Invested With Madoff (Update3)

Dec. 24 (Bloomberg) -- Liliane Bettencourt, the world’s wealthiest woman, entrusted part of her $22.9 billion fortune with Bernard Madoff through the fund manager found dead in New York yesterday, two people familiar with the matter said.

The 86-year-old daughter of L’Oreal SA founder Eugene Schueller was the first investor in a fund managed by Access International Advisors, the people said, speaking on condition of anonymity because her investment isn’t public. The body of Access co-founder Thierry Magon de La Villehuchet, 65, was found in his Madison Avenue office yesterday. Police said he probably killed himself.

Bettencourt, a Parisian, joins wealthy individuals from around the world, including Spanish billionaire Alicia Koplowitz, U.S. moviemaker Steven Spielberg and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, among victims of what Madoff, 70, told investigators was a $50 billion Ponzi scheme.

“More high-profile names who have been victimized by Madoff will start to become known now,” said Ron Geffner, who represents hedge funds at the New York-based law firm Sadis & Goldberg LLP. “There’s a strong sense of anguish, fear and distrust.”

30 Percent Stake

Bettencourt, the only child of Schueller, holds a 30 percent stake in Paris-based L’Oreal, the world’s largest cosmetics maker, according to Bloomberg data. She inherited L’Oreal in 1957 when her father died and holds a seat on its board.

Bettencourt rarely speaks to the media. She gave her first interview in 20 years this month to the weekly Figaro Magazine.

Access, which oversaw $3 billion, raised money mainly from wealthy European investors.

Access said in a Dec. 12 letter to clients that funds including its LUXALPHA SICAV-American Selection invested solely with Madoff’s eponymous investment firm. The fund had $1.4 billion in assets as of Nov. 17, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Access says it carries out “extensive” due diligence on the funds to which it allocates money, a process that can take as long as six months and cost $100,000. It also hires private investigators to run “extensive background checks” on fund managers, including searches on professional credentials, regulatory filings and bankruptcy, according to marketing documents dated September.

Suicide

New York police are working on the assumption that de La Villehuchet’s death was a suicide, Commissioner Raymond Kelly said yesterday. The fund manager was found “with his feet propped up on his desk, a trash pail nearby to collect blood,” and no sign of a second person, Kelly said in the interview.

He had cuts made by a box-cutter in the area of his biceps and his wrist, and pills were found nearby, Kelly said at a news conference. No suicide note was found. His body was found at his desk early yesterday morning by a security guard who had been called by an employee unable to enter the office, Kelly said.

An autopsy was conducted today, New York City Medical Examiner spokeswoman Ellen Borakove said in an interview. The results won’t be known until a toxicology report is returned next week, she said.

De La Villehuchet founded Access in 1994 with Patrick Littaye. One of the firm’s partners was Philippe Junot, according to the marketing documents. Junot is the former husband of Princess Caroline of Monaco. Prince Michel of Yugoslavia is an investor relations executive, according to the documents.

International Background

Prior to Access, de La Villehuchet was chairman and CEO of Credit Lyonnais Securities USA, the U.S. investment banking arm of the French bank. He had joined Credit Lyonnais in 1987, and before that ran Interfinance, an international brokerage firm specializing in French, Belgian and Italian stock markets that he founded in 1983. He worked at Banque Paribas from 1970 to 1983.

Access, which had 26 employees, said in a statement on Dec. 12 it was working with lawyers to assess its exposure to Madoff. UBS AG, LUXALPHA’s administrator until this year, is no longer involved with it, said Karina Byrne, a UBS spokeswoman.

De La Villehuchet’s death comes as lawsuits mount in connection with investors victimized by Madoff. Fairfield Greenwich Group, a hedge-fund firm that had $7.5 billion invested with Madoff, has been sued for allegedly failing to protect its clients’ assets. Madoff was arrested on Dec. 11 and is now under house arrest at his apartment in New York.

Very amusing sarcasm on another blog:

“Funny, there is no Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, or CRA in the UK. However can we explain their boom, bust and credit collapse?”

Three valid explanations:

1) Bill Clinton - attended Cambridge.
2) Jimmy Carter - spoke English.
3) Barney Frank. - lived.

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2008/12/bank-of-england-allowed-crazy-borrowing/

4) LABOUR PARTY!!!

No laws, no institutions, no strawmen needed? Just "labour party"?

I suppose the analysis is par for the course...

No strawmen needed Just strawberries. Happy holidays!

Headset said: 'Wonder if we will see some sort of government bailout for Madoff “victims.” '

With that list of who's who victims - pretty much count on it. You and I (of the taxpayer/slave subculture) will foot the bill. I'm betting they'll get the meat hooks into bailout money using creatively structured brokerage coverage, nominally through the SIPC. The SIPC's empty Mr. Paulson, fill'er up! Another round on the house!

1 car family: Deflationary psychology

We have been a One car family of four adults for 2 months now. We had 2 cars with about 75,000 miles on them and I sold them both, then bought a subcompact brand new for cash at a deeply discounted price. Like many families, our income has not risen while major expenses like property taxes, insurance, etc have increased. Consolidating into one car has been less painful than I anticipated and we are managing well. I suspect more families are doing with less now as the fear of economic disaster looms. Certainly car sales indicate that more families are doing with keeping aging cars or perhaps some are reducing the number of cars they own, sometimes involuntarily.

We do not have to have only one car. I can easily buy another car for cash, but am waiting for a 'rip their lungs out' desperation sale price later in 2009. In the past I would not have considered this patient an approach and just hunted for a new car to buy immediately after selling my old car. Now, I smell blood in the water and fully expect the deflationary impact of this economy to result in capitulation car prices. Perhaps, I will have to wait 6 to 9 months until The Crisis in the Fall of 2009 for the Big 3 auto makers to miserably fail and then buy a car when they go bankrupt.

I am a good example of Deflationary psychology: putting off purchases in the expection of lower prices in the future.

I can easily buy another car for cash, but am waiting for a ‘rip their lungs out’ desperation sale price later in 2009.

Ain't it grand? About time cash was king.

Besides, a large part of this deflation is really a correction of prices that were inflated by easy credit. The current reduction of easy credit is allowing prices to settle to a more natural level.

I have given up the car also. Too expensive, with insurance and whatnot. I am aiming for the big items in my balance sheet. It sure feels good to save all of that money, since I thought I had cut as much as was possible. We still have two cars left. Cars are my biggest expense after housing. Getting rid of one car put money in the bank, and cut that expense by one third.

justme Says:
December 25th, 2008 at 7:17 am
Very amusing sarcasm on another blog:

1) Bill Clinton - attended Cambridge.
2) Jimmy Carter - spoke English.
3) Barney Frank. - lived.

True, and there have been booms in NZ, Oz, Netherlands, Eire, Spain, etc, all without FM-type institutions. The biggest conspiracy theory of all tho says that FM and FM and the Fed lowering interest rates effectively created tons of credit and liquidity out of thin air which went around the world, stimulating lending and liberalised credit in all these countries. Also, Wall St CDOs and MBSs etc were directly sold into a lot of countries as investment vehicles, but this would not influence national banks to lend too much to domestic home purchasers. What then of this theory that FM, FM, Wall St and the US Fed indirectly created the world-wide housing boom and bust?

Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year to all patrick.netters...

I understand SF Bay Area prices are down 45% this year????

4) LABOUR PARTY!!!

Very funny. The irony is that there were 12 years of conservative, laissez-faire 'Liberal Party' rule in Oz during the whole boom cycle, and Labour came in just as the bust commenced. They luckily have a $40 bn Federal surplus mainly from mining proceeds that they are desperately using to pump-prime the economy a la John Maynard Keynes' prescription, but the surplus will probably run out before the recession is over. It's currently being spent on writing Xmas cheques to pensioners and anyone with children ($1k per), pumping up house prices by offering $21K to all first home buyers, and providing 'liquidity' to banks. And supposedly a massive infrastructure-building, job-creating Keynesian-style nation-building exercise -- new roads, rail, fibre optic infrastructure, whatever. Anyway, they inherited a poisoned chalice from the previous 'business-oriented' govt (who sat on their hands and did nothing but slash services) but who at least scrimped and saved a reasonable surplus, mostly from the fluke of a mining boom...

FuzzyMath Says:
December 19th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
do you ever get concerned that capitalism itself is a form of a ponzi scheme? I haven’t put too much philosophical thought into it, but something about it nags at me. Namely, absent growth, the system seems to break down entirely.

Also, what growth is real? As the rug gets pulled out of the last 8 years, we are seeing alot of castles made of sand. How far back does this fake growth go I wonder? The early 80’s? 60’s? WWII?

See Steve Keen's site, 'Debt(de)flation' for an interesting economic analysis of the role of lending in creating artificial 'growth' over several decades -- http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/ -- current long article about Ponzi schemes in particular, but I'm thinking about his article titled something like '40 years of increasing debt' -- debt started hiking in the late 60s, leading to the early 70s crash and recession, for instance.

As for GDP growth, I dunno, a lot of it seems to come from digging new stuff out of the ground, technological breakthroughs and efficiencies, and just plain old inflation...or debtflation...

DS,

We can agree that the Federal Reserve had a large and significant role, also internationally by spreading the gospel and indeed being the enabler of other central banks setting of low interest rates around the world.

Can you believe this!

http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/article950391.ece

# Different Sean Says:
I understand SF Bay Area prices are down 45% this year????

Only the median. Last year, the low end was stalled and mostly middle and high end properties moved, so the median in Nov 2007 was artificially high. This year seems to be the reverse - foreclosure sales are fattening up the low end (at lower distress pricing) while the high end is stalled because there are not enough buyers to make transactions happen at the ridiculous asking prices. As a result, recorded sales in Nov 2008 are mostly low-end - which when compared with the Nov 2007 median seems like a huge drop.

I think the YOY comparisons will flatten out from this extreme in a few months - giving realtwhores and that joker at Dataqueef a chance to claim that the market is bottoming out...

Also, In the areas where most of us would actually _want_ to buy, wishing prices are down only about 15%. The 'fortress' has cracked, most people I meet are silently worried, and the fools who chanted 'it won't happen in crappertino' have mostly shut the fuck up - but panic is yet to take hold.

SP,

Here's to 2009 !

>> The ‘fortress’ has cracked, most people I meet are silently worried, and the fools who chanted ‘it won’t happen in crappertino’ have mostly shut the fuck up - but panic is yet to take hold.

I wish utter distress to these people in 2009...

Health care is going to be a big topic in 2009.

On that note, does anyone here have some health care BLOGS to recommend? The ideal would be to find a blog that was the "Patrick.Net of Health Care".

I'm especially interested in the "inside view" from the medical profession, the health insurance profession, the dental profession, optometrists and so on. Just as with the housing market, I suspect that the information one can glean from mainstream sources is not very good or insightful.

I'm also interested in patient-centric blogs, but there seem to be more of those readily available out there.

O'Brien: Nine predictions for Silicon Valley in 2009
By Chris O'Brien, Mercury News

As we look ahead to 2009, I wish I could predict lots of bright, sunshiny days ahead. But who are we kidding?

The Silicon Valley economy is now officially on the ropes. Unemployment is up to 7.2 percent, and rising. Layoffs are accelerating. And perhaps in the biggest sign the apocalypse may be upon us, even Google is cutting back on perks.

So, not much holiday cheer to predict. But here are nine things I predict will happen in 2009:

1 Twitter will be sold. And that's good. There is no business model here, so it's time to move along. And I say this as an absolute Twitter fanatic. It's a truly innovative form of communication that is better off as part of a larger company.

Best bets for a buyer are Yahoo or Google (even though Twitter has also talked to Facebook). In my mind, Yahoo makes the most sense, given its focus on content, though most valley insiders will probably root for Google.

2 There will be no IPOs in Silicon Valley. The good news here is that there have been so few IPOs since 2001 that the valley's economy has become much less dependent on the flow of money from initial public offerings of stock.

The bigger blow will be psychological. With mergers and acquisitions also slumping, hopefully this will put the spotlight on innovation rather than the quest for a pot of gold.

3 Yahoo will sell its search business to Microsoft. And that will bring an end to one of the valley's biggest dramas. The cash from the deal will buy Yahoo some time to implement its new strategy of opening up its platform to outsiders.

4 The South Bay will give up all the jobs we've regained since the dot-com bust. Employment peaked at 1.08 million in December 2000 and then fell to 849,500 in January 2004. Job numbers peaked again in June 2008 with 916,500, but fell to 911,100 in November.

With layoffs just kicking in, that number will fall sharply in the first three months of the new year. And with no recovery in site, expect the valley's job count to get close to the January 2004 level.

5 The competition between Facebook and Google will emerge as the year's dominant Internet theme. In recent years, it's been Google vs. Yahoo, or Google vs. Microsoft. When it comes to search and advertising, though, Google has left both in the dust.

But as that growth slows, Google has been rolling out services to get users to spend more time on its site (Gmail, Android, Docs, video chat). While Google still gets far more traffic, Facebook has narrowed the gap on the amount of time spent on its site. According to comScore, people worldwide spent 33.9 billion minutes on Facebook in October, compared with 41.6 billion minutes on Google.

More important, Facebook's time on site is growing faster than Google's (up 19 percent compared with 3.6 percent from September). And the Facebook Connect initiative, letting users take their Facebook identity to other sites, will considerably extend its reach. If Facebook ever figures out how to create a better advertising service, Google could face a serious threat for the first time in several years.

6 The green-tech revolution will continue. If you're looking for a bright spot, here it is. Green-tech companies will continue to draw the most venture capital, they will continue to hire, and they will continue to see sales growth. By the end of 2009, we all may be wondering whether it's time to change our name to Green Valley.

7 Tesla will turn off the lights. Here's the biggest exception to the green revolution trend. Tesla is a bold, ambitious idea that is going to get squashed by the economic tidal wave. Someone is going to figure out how to turn electric cars into a viable business, and it won't be anyone working in Detroit.

Unfortunately, it won't be Tesla, either, because the San Carlos company will get lost in the shuffle as the government bails out the old automakers.

8 The biotech industry will experience a wave of consolidation. No other industry needs as much capital to fund product development that lasts so many years. At the same time, many of the largest pharmaceutical companies haven't invested enough to keep their pipelines filled with promising new drugs. They'll try to solve this by gobbling up biotech startups much earlier in their development cycle than usual, which increasingly has taken on the role of drug development for big players, anyway.

9 Steve Jobs will be fine, but Apple's sales will not. The great consumer spending juggernaut has finally run out of steam. Sales of iPods and iPhones will take a big hit. But that's OK. Because we'll learn that all this hubbub about Jobs' health problems was just idle chatter. Jobs has given Silicon Valley some of its most thrilling moments over the past 25 years. Here's hoping he makes it another 25.

There you have it. I'll check back next December. And if I get them all right, I'll post a video of myself online doing a victory dance.

Happy New Year.

PermaRenter,

I wouldn't worry about those fortress people. For the most part they're rich Asians, lotsa money from Asia they can patriate here to cover their standards of living. Valley tech firms' parking lots are jammed with their recent issue Lexuses and the like, and private schools like Harker and jammed with their kids. Many of them need to work to keep their immigration status, but many of them don't, they're US citizens even.

PermaRenter,

Just because some smartass says that he can solve transportation problems by being more entrepenneurially SiliconValley like and less dinosaur like doesn't mean he can change the physics of the universe to make some VaporWare electric car.

Duh!

Economists expect a grim 2009 in Silicon Valley
By Pete Carey, Mercury News

Across the valley's tech sector, companies are cutting earnings estimates and forecasts, laying off workers and hunkering down as spending shrinks on many of the goods and

"We are going to have a tough downturn, and everybody's going to have to tighten their belt," predicted Bill Coleman, president and chief executive of software infrastructure company Cassatt. He suspects valley companies will have more layoffs early next year, after the holidays.

Already, there have been major layoffs at Sun Microsystems, Yahoo, KLA-Tencor, Adobe Systems, Hewlett-Packard, eBay and Advanced Micro Devices. Even mighty Google has cut back on hiring.

"I don't think anybody knows what's happened," said Seagate Technology Chief Executive Bill Watkins. He said he expects credit to remain frozen for six more months, shrinking the market for the valley's goods and services.

There was a "tremendous underlying demand" for digital products that should have produced double-digit growth over the next two years, he said. "Then we created this credit crisis that has just frozen everybody. We're all trying to hunker down. ... We're all going to have to restructure and get capacity in line with what current demand looks like, and then get back when growth opens up."

Weaker chip demand

Demand for products related to semiconductors, the valley's bellwether industry, is weakening. SEMI, the industry trade group, expects a 21 percent decline next year in equipment sales, following a 28 percent decline this year.

Intel is cutting discretionary spending, reducing travel and limiting but not freezing hiring, said company spokesman Chuck Mulloy. "We're reducing factory loading — how many wafers we put through fabs — where necessary," he said. "We're in pretty good shape competitively, but you have to see how the economy plays out."

"The outlook for San Jose is pretty rough in 2009," said Luke Tilley, senior economist with Global Insight, an economic forecasting company headquartered in Massachusetts. He said he expects the valley to shed 26,000 jobs and post a negative 1.5 percent growth rate next year.

One major problem is that the valley's products suddenly became more expensive for foreign buyers because of the stronger dollar, just when those economies are struggling with the global recession. That is compounding the effects of the spending slowdown among U.S. consumers who are watching their home values and retirement accounts dwindle.

Cassatt's Coleman says the drop-off in capital spending will make this recession more serious in some ways than the dot-com bubble's aftermath, when the valley lost 231,400 jobs, or 21 percent of its workforce. A lot of those jobs were in dot-com companies that had no business existing in the first place, he observed. This time around, capital spending — the tech industry's oxygen — has become scarce.

"Every company in this valley, particularly the bigger ones, is going to be dramatically impacted," Coleman predicted, whereas in 2001 the fallout was limited to a smaller range of companies.

.....
.....

"It's not going to be a fun year, but it's not going to be a disaster," said Richard Carlson of Spectrum Economics in Palo Alto, who recently prepared an economic forecast for the San Jose Redevelopment Agency.

Carlson said he thinks there's a chance of a snapback early next year if Americans don't "pull in their horns" and stop spending on the tech products the valley makes. He is predicting fewer than 10,000 jobs lost in 2009, and a 1 percent negative growth rate in the overall valley economy.

"We will not get a non-automobile, non-construction major recession," he said. "There will be a mild slowdown in Silicon Valley, but nothing close to what we've seen when we've had specific problems in the high-tech sector. We didn't go crazy this time. We didn't finance 10 startups where two were justified, and we didn't build 10 buildings where two were justified. We're still an area where if we build it, they'll still come," Carlson said.

Levy says the global nature of the recession will damage Silicon Valley because "the foreign customers we used to depend on when the U.S. economy was weak are also cutting back on their purchases." He thinks there is hope for growth in the near future.

"Toward the middle to the end of the year, we begin to see much more tangible evidence of investments in alternative energy, at least from government. These should spark an increase in venture capital investment in the valley, though not enough to get growth going in the near term," Levy said.

Michelle Cardinal, 37, formerly a customer service specialist for Searchme.com, also has landed a new job after being cut in October. "I've been laid off twice in 2008," said Cardinal, who lost one job in February at Flickr, the photo-sharing subsidiary of Yahoo.com, then landed the position at Searchme in April.

The October layoff came during the week when Cardinal and her husband were about to close on a house in San Francisco. They managed to back away from the deal, and within a few weeks, a former co-worker had put her name through to Redroom.com, a San Francisco startup developing an online community for authors, agents and the literati.

"I was ridiculously lucky," said Cardinal, who also had gotten some leads from Santiago before landing at Redroom after only a few weeks of joblessness. Her take on the startup lifestyle after more than a decade of job-hopping: "With the potential for great rewards come great risks."

Michelle Cardinal, 37, formerly a customer service specialist for Searchme, also has landed a new job after being cut in October. “I’ve been laid off twice in 2008,” said Cardinal, who lost one job in February at Flickr, the photo-sharing subsidiary of Yahoo.com, then landed the position at Searchme in April.

The October layoff came during the week when Cardinal and her husband were about to close on a house in San Francisco. They managed to back away from the deal, and within a few weeks, a former co-worker had put her name through to Redroom.com, a San Francisco startup developing an online community for authors, agents and the literati.

“I was ridiculously lucky,” said Cardinal, who also had gotten some leads from Santiago before landing at Redroom after only a few weeks of joblessness. Her take on the startup lifestyle after more than a decade of job-hopping: “With the potential for great rewards come great risks.”