recession and irony

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As you may have been aware of, in the most parts of the world with good financial establishments there's been a great flunk in stock prices. Values has been dropping down and there's also been some massive lay offs, due to the fact that companies are trying to survive. This is what you hear from media, but what is the reality behind it. Let's face it, there's no real recession, it's just a state of mind people are in. Fearful of what may happen. I've spoken to my dad just recently on this matter, he's a company owner and he told me that since he's not psychologically influenced by media he's not letting anyone go, the money is still the same, just the amount of work has dropped and he has to use some side stacks of money to cover that a little bit, but it is not a major panic issue. The irony in the whole story that caught my attention was definitely Sony. Here in Japan, they will let go around 16000 employees until 2010 if I'm correct. I will give myself allowance to state that I sincerely believe the people who are being laid off are actually the people who had put the most effort to create the products and to give the company image and recognizable brand. The specific case I'm trying to refer here is their game console Play Station 3. While their competitors have lowered the prices and the public opinion was screaming at Sony's managers to cut the prize of their product, they'd do nothing but calmly show the world middle finger and thought everything is going to be just fine. Now that they haven't sold enough products as the analytics thought they would they're firing people. The problem is they're not firing the people responsible for what has happened, but the people who have probably contributed the most. I might be wrong, but the same case has happened in some other countries. Perhaps the most ridiculous thing is that some managers won't even get the cut in their salary, but they will probably have them promoted by the end of 2010. Sick.