[ascotan]

I personally think this "we hired too many people" excuse doesn't hold water. This reminds me of the dot-com bubble where they jacked up interest rates and it caused companies to do layoffs.

Back then interest rates were low and money was cheap. It was growth over profit and when money is cheap you can afford to run in the red as long as you're getting bigger. The minute interest rates went up companies had to rethink how they're going to spend money. We haven't seen the type of corp consolidation yet that we saw back then but it's still early days.