Hello, everybody! Hope your 2008 is off to an amazing start, and despite all appearances to the contrary, I have not in fact fled to a foreign country in an effort to shirk my Gig duties. Actually, I got a nasty flu and decided to spare you guys the NyQuil-induced ramblings. (And hey, I did say I’d be back in January, and technically, it is still January, right? )

But it was lovely to come back to your sweet letters, and Gig reader Juan gets a special shout-out for threatening to seek therapy if I didn’t get back to work. So in the interest of Juan’s mental health — and let’s be honest, my own; I missed you guys! — let’s get to it. We’ve got some new stuff in store that I’ll be excited to get your thoughts on, but in the New Year’s tradition, I thought we’d start with a bit of reflection. By that I mean, it’s been a few weeks since last we spoke, and in my acetaminophen haze, I had a lot of time to think. So today, friends, I’m going to torture you with…

WHAT I LEARNED OVER THE BREAK

(or “5 maudlin semi-epiphanies that are sure to infuriate Yadgyu, which only further motivates me to share them”)

Be forewarned, I really have missed you guys, and it shows in the treatise that follows. So apologies in advance. And in case you don’t make it to the end, we’d love to hear about your recent semi-epiphanies, so comment away.

1. We’re too old to spend two straight weeks at Mom’s.

Remember when you used to come home on a break and, as annoyed as you might’ve been at your parents, you kind of loved vegging at home? Well, I think those days might need to be over, at least for me and all of the other should-be independent twentysomething people we know and love.

Regular readers have probably by now ascertained that my family’s pretty tight (i.e. if we were any closer, we’d be sardines). And yet, when the kids decided that this holiday, we’d kick it old school and spend all our time off at Mom’s, we didn’t really know what we were in for.

Our hearts were in the right place; this was her first Christmas in a new house and we wanted to give her as many opportunities to cook ginormous meals as possible. But seriously, by about Dec. 28, we’d each gained 10 pounds and reverted to our worst, whiniest, most awfully teenage incarnation.

So while it’s true what we’ve often said here — that while for many Yers, there’s often nothing our moms would like better than to have us home — it’s time to have our own homes! And maybe even host our own holiday parties! The kind our parents can come to, with, like, real wine and no passing out. Sheesh.

2. We’re not too old to play Wii till 4 a.m.

The preceding tirade notwithstanding, it turns out that one good thing about regressing to childhood at home is remembering that there are some seemingly childish things that are pretty darn awesome — including, but not limited to, the Wii, hot chocolate, Legos and Animal Planet.

And incredibly, when you indulge (a bit) in these extravagances, you often come to the realization that this stuff is at least as cool as standing around at a cocktail party trying to sound smart and wishing you were home watching Adult Swim. Which is what I for one often found myself doing when I got my first real gig and suddenly started worrying about being taken seriously by my legitimately grown-up colleagues.

But as I get legitimately older myself (officially identified a wrinkle, FYI) and vaguely more secure, I’m finding that my favorite Gen Y “characteristics,” to the extent that those exist, are all our little paradoxes. Love the environment/drive an SUV. Most educated people ever/obsessed with MTV. Grew up too fast/can’t get out of our parents’ houses to save our lives. (And before you letter-writers get going, I am speaking very generally here, folks.)

So yes, sure we want to be — and should want to be — adults, but a little Wii never hurt anyone. At least not if you keep your Wii jacket on, take breaks, and clear all the furniture out of your living room. And more importantly, it does keep you from turning into into Holden Caulfield’s long-lost angstier twin, even if you do spend an eternity at your Mom’s.

3. We’re finally just old enough to learn the good stuff.

There was an upside to the aforementioned eternity, though. When we were small, our mom worked a full day; cooked dinner every evening; sewed, papier-mâché’d, and otherwise “project”ed with us every night; and still found time to be best friends with our teachers and know all our business.

As a kid, you take that good stuff for granted and ask yourself why, oh, why, you’ve been cursed with a mom who won’t just take you to McDonald’s. By the time you go away to school, you appreciate it enough to miss the nourishment, but not quite enough to understand the labor. But once you’re out in the world with a real job and bills to pay, well, then you start to get it. (Forget kids; my fish would file a petition of neglect if they could.)

Talk about your self-esteem killers. My poor sister and I will so never be as anything as our mom. Which is why this break, what with the eternity we spent at home, we actually got the chance to ask some questions and learn some things. And not the encyclopedia factoids and oft-repeated lectures we groaned at in our argumentative youth, either. But some things that are actually worth knowing, like recipes for the West Indian dishes we grew up eating, the patterns for our favorite sundresses, and the full-length versions of family ghost stories we’ve been hearing in snippets for years.

It shouldn’t be all that long before we (gasp) have our own children, and if we want to be even decent approximations of the good older people in our lives, we’d better start asking the right questions now. There isn’t much of a precedent for that in our country, and goodness knows we Yers are sometimes considered the worst offenders when it comes to valuing our elders, but I do know that we value expertise, and more often than not, the people who raised us have some that’s worth sharing.

4. Sometimes, you just have to say, “Look how amazing I am.”

As little as we know, there is something to be said for a little self-affirmation in spite of it all. Consider my brother Kamran, the RIT freshman. We’re all sitting at the dinner table over the holiday, chatting away, and our mom gets a call from one of the engineers at her office, who was dealing with a problem. She hangs up, shares some (general and totally over my head) details with us, and Kam says, “Oh, so he has to replace the filament.” Mom says something along the lines of, “Yes, precisely, exactly, quite right,” our collective eyes glaze over, and somewhere in the ensuing self-absorbed silence, Kam says to himself, and I kid you not: “Look at how amazing I am.”

Laughter, of course, erupts. But he’s so far off in his own world that he seems a tad confused about the reaction, still smiling to himself over his little triumph. Obviously, he suffered merciless derision the rest of the holiday (for this and his sheepish admission that, until this Christmas, he thought Elvis Presley’s “Blue Christmas” was in fact called “Hullabaloo Christmas” — classic).

But my mom rightly pointed out that for a kid who, after getting his first 80-something on an elementary school spelling test, spent the entire afternoon with a sheet over his face, emerging only to cry, “I’m the only one who gets B’s in the family,” some quiet self-regard was a big deal, as it should be. So regard yourself quietly, and remember how amazing you are. Just don’t tell your siblings, if they’re the sort that, you know, live to mock you.

5. A good job is like a good boyfriend.

And that, dear readers, is why I’ve been gone so long. Because, if I’m being honest, I’d tried to open my apartment door with my office key just one too many times. And had even answered my cell phone, “Fortune,” on more than one occasion. Never mind the sad realization that, as far as my brain was concerned, I’d used and abused every word I had to give, and might in fact have had nothing left to say. My work boundaries were so fluid that I was drowning on and off the job, and that does not a good life — or good Gig writing — make.

But as the proverbial “they” say, absence makes the heart grow fonder. And with a few weeks away from you and the real-life boyfriend, I’ve returned excited to see you both, with new and (I hope) interesting things to talk about, and a fair amount of starry-eyed optimism about what this year might hold. If you’ve read this far, you’re feeling pretty optimistic, too (certainly about the outside possibility that this’ll end up being worthwhile reading ). And you can probably also tell that, whatever I might say, as monstrously long as this post has been, I obviously missed writing to and for you. And that’s just the kind of re-discovery I’m hoping is in store for all of us. So here’s to making our work work for us in 2008. It’s going to be fun.

Allrighty then. Guess I did miss pontificating with you guys. But now that we’re done with that, on to the 56 million new posts I’ve been planning. And in the meantime, if my musings got you to thinking, let us know what you learned — or un-learned — since last we blogged…

Hello, everybody! Hope your 2008 is off to an amazing start, and despite all appearances to the contrary, I have not in fact fled to a foreign country in an effort to shirk my Gig duties. Actually, I got a nasty flu and decided to spare you guys the NyQuil-induced ramblings. (And hey, I did say I’d be back in January, and technically, it is still January, right? )

But it was lovely to come back to your sweet letters, and Gig reader Juan gets a special shout-out for threatening to seek therapy if I didn’t get back to work. So in the interest of Juan’s mental health — and let’s be honest, my own; I missed you guys! — let’s get to it. We’ve got some new stuff in store that I’ll be excited to get your thoughts on, but in the New Year’s tradition, I thought we’d start with a bit of reflection. By that I mean, it’s been a few weeks since last we spoke, and in my acetaminophen haze, I had a lot of time to think. So today, friends, I’m going to torture you with…

WHAT I LEARNED OVER THE BREAK

(or “5 maudlin semi-epiphanies that are sure to infuriate Yadgyu, which only further motivates me to share them”)

Be forewarned, I really have missed you guys, and it shows in the treatise that follows. So apologies in advance. And in case you don’t make it to the end, we’d love to hear about your recent semi-epiphanies, so comment away.

1. We’re too old to spend two straight weeks at Mom’s.

Remember when you used to come home on a break and, as annoyed as you might’ve been at your parents, you kind of loved vegging at home? Well, I think those days might need to be over, at least for me and all of the other should-be independent twentysomething people we know and love.

Regular readers have probably by now ascertained that my family’s pretty tight (i.e. if we were any closer, we’d be sardines). And yet, when the kids decided that this holiday, we’d kick it old school and spend all our time off at Mom’s, we didn’t really know what we were in for.

Our hearts were in the right place; this was her first Christmas in a new house and we wanted to give her as many opportunities to cook ginormous meals as possible. But seriously, by about Dec. 28, we’d each gained 10 pounds and reverted to our worst, whiniest, most awfully teenage incarnation.

So while it’s true what we’ve often said here — that while for many Yers, there’s often nothing our moms would like better than to have us home — it’s time to have our own homes! And maybe even host our own holiday parties! The kind our parents can come to, with, like, real wine and no passing out. Sheesh.

2. We’re not too old to play Wii till 4 a.m.

The preceding tirade notwithstanding, it turns out that one good thing about regressing to childhood at home is remembering that there are some seemingly childish things that are pretty darn awesome — including, but not limited to, the Wii, hot chocolate, Legos and Animal Planet.

And incredibly, when you indulge (a bit) in these extravagances, you often come to the realization that this stuff is at least as cool as standing around at a cocktail party trying to sound smart and wishing you were home watching Adult Swim. Which is what I for one often found myself doing when I got my first real gig and suddenly started worrying about being taken seriously by my legitimately grown-up colleagues.

But as I get legitimately older myself (officially identified a wrinkle, FYI) and vaguely more secure, I’m finding that my favorite Gen Y “characteristics,” to the extent that those exist, are all our little paradoxes. Love the environment/drive an SUV. Most educated people ever/obsessed with MTV. Grew up too fast/can’t get out of our parents’ houses to save our lives. (And before you letter-writers get going, I am speaking very generally here, folks.)

So yes, sure we want to be — and should want to be — adults, but a little Wii never hurt anyone. At least not if you keep your Wii jacket on, take breaks, and clear all the furniture out of your living room. And more importantly, it does keep you from turning into into Holden Caulfield’s long-lost angstier twin, even if you do spend an eternity at your Mom’s.

3. We’re finally just old enough to learn the good stuff.

There was an upside to the aforementioned eternity, though. When we were small, our mom worked a full day; cooked dinner every evening; sewed, papier-mâché’d, and otherwise “project”ed with us every night; and still found time to be best friends with our teachers and know all our business.

As a kid, you take that good stuff for granted and ask yourself why, oh, why, you’ve been cursed with a mom who won’t just take you to McDonald’s. By the time you go away to school, you appreciate it enough to miss the nourishment, but not quite enough to understand the labor. But once you’re out in the world with a real job and bills to pay, well, then you start to get it. (Forget kids; my fish would file a petition of neglect if they could.)

Talk about your self-esteem killers. My poor sister and I will so never be as anything as our mom. Which is why this break, what with the eternity we spent at home, we actually got the chance to ask some questions and learn some things. And not the encyclopedia factoids and oft-repeated lectures we groaned at in our argumentative youth, either. But some things that are actually worth knowing, like recipes for the West Indian dishes we grew up eating, the patterns for our favorite sundresses, and the full-length versions of family ghost stories we’ve been hearing in snippets for years.

It shouldn’t be all that long before we (gasp) have our own children, and if we want to be even decent approximations of the good older people in our lives, we’d better start asking the right questions now. There isn’t much of a precedent for that in our country, and goodness knows we Yers are sometimes considered the worst offenders when it comes to valuing our elders, but I do know that we value expertise, and more often than not, the people who raised us have some that’s worth sharing.

4. Sometimes, you just have to say, “Look how amazing I am.”

As little as we know, there is something to be said for a little self-affirmation in spite of it all. Consider my brother Kamran, the RIT freshman. We’re all sitting at the dinner table over the holiday, chatting away, and our mom gets a call from one of the engineers at her office, who was dealing with a problem. She hangs up, shares some (general and totally over my head) details with us, and Kam says, “Oh, so he has to replace the filament.” Mom says something along the lines of, “Yes, precisely, exactly, quite right,” our collective eyes glaze over, and somewhere in the ensuing self-absorbed silence, Kam says to himself, and I kid you not: “Look at how amazing I am.”

Laughter, of course, erupts. But he’s so far off in his own world that he seems a tad confused about the reaction, still smiling to himself over his little triumph. Obviously, he suffered merciless derision the rest of the holiday (for this and his sheepish admission that, until this Christmas, he thought Elvis Presley’s “Blue Christmas” was in fact called “Hullabaloo Christmas” — classic).

But my mom rightly pointed out that for a kid who, after getting his first 80-something on an elementary school spelling test, spent the entire afternoon with a sheet over his face, emerging only to cry, “I’m the only one who gets B’s in the family,” some quiet self-regard was a big deal, as it should be. So regard yourself quietly, and remember how amazing you are. Just don’t tell your siblings, if they’re the sort that, you know, live to mock you.

5. A good job is like a good boyfriend.

And that, dear readers, is why I’ve been gone so long. Because, if I’m being honest, I’d tried to open my apartment door with my office key just one too many times. And had even answered my cell phone, “Fortune,” on more than one occasion. Never mind the sad realization that, as far as my brain was concerned, I’d used and abused every word I had to give, and might in fact have had nothing left to say. My work boundaries were so fluid that I was drowning on and off the job, and that does not a good life — or good Gig writing — make.

But as the proverbial “they” say, absence makes the heart grow fonder. And with a few weeks away from you and the real-life boyfriend, I’ve returned excited to see you both, with new and (I hope) interesting things to talk about, and a fair amount of starry-eyed optimism about what this year might hold. If you’ve read this far, you’re feeling pretty optimistic, too (certainly about the outside possibility that this’ll end up being worthwhile reading ). And you can probably also tell that, whatever I might say, as monstrously long as this post has been, I obviously missed writing to and for you. And that’s just the kind of re-discovery I’m hoping is in store for all of us. So here’s to making our work work for us in 2008. It’s going to be fun.

Allrighty then. Guess I did miss pontificating with you guys. But now that we’re done with that, on to the 56 million new posts I’ve been planning. And in the meantime, if my musings got you to thinking, let us know what you learned — or un-learned — since last we blogged…

In advance of Google’s being named the best company to work for in America, for the second year in a row I sat down recently with the founders of Google (GOOG), Sergey Brin and Larry Page, and CEO Eric Schmidt. Toward the end of the interview, I asked what Google will do when it inevitably hits the wall, when the company suffers a major hiccup. Sergey Brin gave a thoughtful answer that essentially said that everything Google does for employees will serve it well in tough times. (A different version of the interview appears in the current issue of Fortune Magazine.)

That’s good and fine. But what I really want to know is whether Google does scenario planning for that day and if so, what’s the plan of action. No company is immune from a major slowdown — or worse. IBM (IBM), Microsoft (MSFT), Dell (DELL), even Wal-Mart (WMT). Each was invincible at some point, and each sooner or later missed its moment. Each planned inadequately for the deluge. Is it even possible? I’d love to know your thoughts.

Netscape, we hardly knew ye. This Friday AOL, which, like Fortune Magazine, is part of the Time Warner (TWX) empire, will become a zombie browser. AOL announced late last year that it will no longer support Netscape, meaning that it won’t update features or provide security upgrades. That means the few people who continue to use the browser should stop. Already, AOL is recommending that Netscape users switch to Firefox.

It’s a peculiar quality of the technology industry that such important companies and products can simply vanish in so short a time. Netscape went public just a dozen years ago and sold to AOL in 1999 for $10 billion. Its battle with Microsoft (MSFT) spawned an epic antitrust fight with the Justice Department, a topic covered in an interesting Financial Times column today.

Most interestingly, though, is the story of how Netscape itself gave birth to Firefox, today’s browser of choice for non-Apple (AAPL) users who prefer not to use Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. I use Firefox and cover Silicon Valley, but I didn’t quite know the whole story of how Firefox came to be. It was told quite well today in an article in the San Francisco Chronicle.

When they work out well, management consultants bring a fresh perspective to a company that needs one. eBay’s a strange choice for a management consultant’s fresh look, given that its senior-management ranks have been riddled with former consultants since the day Meg Whitman, who started her business career at Bain & Co., walked in the door.All the same, eBay’s new CEO, 47-year-old John Donahoe, not only is talking about challenging conventional wisdoms at the pioneering Web company, he’s actually challenging them. This is one consultant, after all, who can analyze the problem and then implement a plan.

eBay needs one.In an interview Wednesday afternoon after he was named CEO, I asked Donahoe and Meg Whitman what was right with eBay and what needed improvement. Whitman, tellingly and appropriately, deferred to Donahoe. What’s right, he said, is eBay’s “leadership position in e-commerce,” online payments and communications. By the first two he meant eBay.com, the company’s flagship property, and PayPal, the surging leader in Web-based payments. By communications he meant Skype, on which the jury remains out, certainly as part of eBay.

As for challenges, Donahoe said eBay needs to make sure it keeps up. He said eBay.com needs to make itself easier and simpler to use, that its fixed-price sales function needs to be improved and that the company must continue growing PayPal.The last goal isn’t new. PayPal has been an eBay priority for years, and Donahoe noted that PayPal has experienced three quarters of accelerating growth, the type of boast Whitman used to regularly be able to make about eBay overall. As for the first two goals, Donahoe says 2008 will be the time to prove many of the improvements eBay has been readying during 2007. The company has simplified its home page and beefed up its feedback system, particularly with regard to sellers.

Those are incremental changes, though. More critical will be a move Donahoe describes as “challenging the fundamental precepts of eBay.” For example, eBay’s search function long has listed auctions that met user’s criteria but ranked results by the auctions that would end soonest. It was the eBay way, but not necessarily the best way. Beginning this year, the company will roll out a “best match” function, already being tested in Korea and France, that will prioritize the least-costly fixed-price items with the highest seller ratings.

Earlier in the day Donahoe had told investors that eBay’s best days were ahead of it. I asked him how he could justify that optimism, considering the extraordinary past decade. His answer wasn’t quite as incisive as some of his others. “eBay has a timeless, inspiring purpose and mission,” he said. “Our broadest goal is continuing that purpose and mission and in the process build a great and enduring company.” It’s a worthy goal. And a tall order.

Skeptics and other pundits think eBay should boost shareholder value by ditching PayPal and Skype, arguably its greatest and worst acquisitions, respectively. Donahoe shared his thoughts candidly. “We like the businesses we’re in and believe in the synergies,” he said. In particular, he believes in PayPal’s ability to continue to improve the selling experience on eBay. I point out that PayPal might be able to expand its non-eBay business better with the likes of Amazon.com and Google if it weren’t owned by eBay. Donahoe thinks customers will keep demanding PayPal and that its bigger presence creates a “flywheel effect” that will counter competitive threats.It’s debatable if keeping PayPal is the correct decision, but eBay seems serious about it. The elevation of PayPal President Rajiv Dutta, eBay’s longtime CFO, to Donahoe’s former job as president of eBay seems to prove that.Donahoe seems less committed to Skype. He notes that eBay only installed its own management team at Skype two months ago and asserts that “we’re just getting around to the position where we can test the synergies.” Mark a Skype sale as to be determined.

Finally, I asked Whitman what her plans are for after March 31, when she steps down as CEO. She’ll remain on the board of eBay, where she plans to focus her energies in 2008. She’s also a director of Procter & Gamble (PG) and Dreamworks (DWA). She’s working on her family’s new foundation and also as a national finance chairman for Mitt Romney, a personal friend from her Bain days. Asked what she’ll do in 2009, she responds, “I don’t know about that.”

A tradition at eBay is that the people who work with its senior executives get to name their personal conference rooms. The meeting place belonging to John Donahoe, the top executive for eBay’s core online marketplace, is Dennis the Menace. If the Wall Street Journal’s sources are right and Donahoe is named the next CEO of eBay when Meg Whitman retires, he’ll likely start causing mischief almost as soon as he’s in the top job.

Donahoe isn’t nearly as well known as Whitman, the public face of eBay (EBAY) for a decade. But he’s no newbie. He’s been at the company for nearly three years now — a tough three years given that he presides over eBay’s thorniest problem, its slow-growth online sales engine. eBay’s missed opportunity is gargantuan. Compared with Amazon.com’s (AMZN) business, for example, eBay.com enjoys a well earned monopoly and the rich profit margins that come from holding no inventory. Yet, as I’ve commented recently,  competitors like Amazon and Google (GOOG) have out innovated eBay, decimating its stock. (Meg Whitman claims to not follow eBay’s stock price. Read my account of the company mid-malaise, about a year ago.)

There already are signs Donahoe has taken the reins at eBay. In early December he spoke at a UBS conference and hinted strongly that major changes were afoot in eBay’s fixed-price sales business. eBay’s sellers have felt nicked and dimed by the company for years. Donahoe suggested that eBay will tinker with its pricing model by lowering upfront prices and raising closing commision fees. The lowering part spooked Wall Street, even if it’s the right thing to do. (It’s a lot like economic stimulus: Lower taxes in hope of expanding the economy. eBay’s not the U.S. government though … if it lowers upfront fees and doesn’t convert the sale its revenues go down.) An insidery writeup of Donahoe’s talk appeared here.

The other big decision facing Donahoe is what to do with PayPal, the eBay-owned payment business that is roaring. Late last year PayPal quietly juiced up its management team, making four key hires of prominent executives who worked at blue-chip companies including Avon (AVP), American Express (AXP), McKinsey, Oracle (ORCL) and Visa. PayPal’s growth engine is its business selling services to online merchants other than eBay, making eBay’s ownership of PayPal less necessary. It’s hard to imagine that PayPal was able to attract such top talent by offering stock packages merely in eBay stock options. Asked if the news was evidence that eBay was planning to spin off or sell PayPal, a PayPal spokeswoman responded: “This shows the caliber of people that want to leave fantastic jobs at fantastic companies to come to PayPal. There are no plans to change PayPal’s structure within eBay.”

The question remains what John Donahoe will do at eBay, assuming he gets the job. (I used to think Jeff Jordan had a lock on the job; I was wrong.) Donahoe is quite literally the Mitt Romney of the Internet world. He’s a Bain consultant through and through, a handsome guy with a gigantic Rolodex (note to kids: that’s where people Donahoe’s age, 47, used to keep their contacts; it’s now a metaphor) and a bias toward action.

Be certain of one thing, should the man insiders call Dennis the Menace get the job, expect some mayhem in the near term.

Like anyone who wants to know where our economy is going, I’ve been scouring the economics news more than usual of late. It’s confusing stuff. Market pros typically say the Fed under its newish chairman Ben Bernanke isn’t doing enough to lower interest rates. People who don’t make their living in the markets tend to point out that it’s not Bernanke’s job to bail out investors who made stupid investments. A third layer of complexity is what, if anything, the administrative and legislative branches should be doing to help in the form of stimulus measures (spending more money, lowering taxes, or both).

The single best article I’ve read recently to make sense of it all is Sunday’s cover story in the New York Times Magazine: “The Education of Ben Bernanke,” by the great Roger Lowenstein. Perhaps with the exception of my colleague Allan Sloan, there isn’t anyone in America who writes as clearly about the complexity of economics as Lowenstein. Over Christmas I read (I’m ashamed to say, for the first time) his “When Genius Failed,” an absolute must read to understand what the mortgage crisis of 2007 does and doesn’t have in common with the collapse of Long-Term Capital Management in 1998.

Taking advantage of his three, count them, three interviews with Bernanke, Lowenstein does an outstanding job of explaining the history of the Federal Reserve, how Bernanke is different from his predeccesor, Alan Greenspan, and how the current crisis unfolded. I’ve been baffled that Bernanke failed to see the problem of the mortgage meltdown sooner, and in the article I found a clue. In his teachings at Princeton, Bernanke became if not a fan, then at least a consumer of econometrics, the study of the economy as it is reflected in the economics data published by the government and others. Greenspan, in comparison, is far more anecdotal and driven by hunches. Had Bernanke paid more attention to anecdotes about how out of the control the mortgage situation was he might have caught on more quickly.

Finally, a small-C criticism of Lowenstein’s article, and not just that it twice misspells Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s surname. Fine as it is by way of explanation, Lowenstein, at least to my read, never offers up a suggestion as to what Bernanke, the president and Congress ought to be doing. Immediately after finishing the article, I caught up with a Saturday editorial in the Wall Street Journal I found far more helpful in this regard. It’s called “The Panic Stage,” and here’s the kicker:

So what to do? Pass a tax cut that is immediate, marginal and permanent. In the “stimulus” grab bag that President Bush is contemplating, the only growth driver is bonus depreciation. Congress will be worse. As for the Fed, continue with the regulatory triage, but ease as little as it can get away with and slowly restore the monetary credibility that was so painfully earned in the 1980s.

This recipe may or may not prevent a recession, though we’d note that so far the underlying economic indicators suggest slower growth rather than a contraction. What these policies would do is prevent today’s panic from becoming something much worse.

This short and punchy editorial, together with Lowenstein’s leisurely and masterly narrative, will bring you up to speed on the economy. For now.

What do you think of our No. 1 company on the Best Companies to Work For list as an employer? Should they be No. 1? Have you worked for Google? Would you like to? What do you think is most important when considering where to work — pay, benefits, company culture, bosses, location? Tell us what you think. The best replies will be published here, and possibly in a future story on CNNMoney.com.

What do you think of the companies on the Best Benefits list? Do you wish your company offered such perks? Would you take advantage of them? Does your company offer benefits like this – or even better ones? Are benefits a big factor you consider when deciding whether to switch jobs? Tell us what you think. The best replies will be published here, and possibly in a future story on CNNMoney.com.

What do you think of the companies on the Top-Paying Companies list? Do you find the paychecks they offer enviable? Or should the salaries and bonuses be even higher? Is pay the main factor you consider when deciding whether to switch jobs? Tell us what you think. The best replies will be published here, and possibly in a future story on CNNMoney.com.