But don't you think there might be other reasons for a general retrenchment in business than just anticpation of a "hostile environment"? It appears that a loss of consumer confidence, a drying up of credit, rising energy costs, soaring national debt, rising unemployment and declining income, international tension, a potential trade war with China and a financial sector on the verge of collapse might also have something to do with it.

I don't own a business, I work for municipal government and I've deliberately prepared myself for and isolated myself from these economic factors as much as I can given my limited resources, and I'm still retrenching like crazy! No one can predict the future, but it's not unreasonable to assume a hard rain's a-gonna fall no matter who gets elected tomorrow.

If there's one thing capitalism can do, it is to rapidly adapt to new conditions, and there is no shortage of eager wannabees ready to step into the Florsheims of all those Atlases shrugging away at Galt's Gulch.

Barring the proverbial worst-case, single-point-of-failure scenario, the economy, just like the global climate, will undergo a phase shift and stabilize at some new condition of equilibrium. Look on the bright side, even during the Great Depression, 3 out of every 4 people had a job.