Back in the first half of the last century, I heard tell of companies who, facing hard times, would do anything to survive and keep the jobs of their employees. Then in the second half of the century it gradually became an earlier option. Now, if a company has a slight glitch in the share price, the first reaction is to announce a percentage job cuts, and loh and behold, the share price corrects, even before some luckless middle manager has received the email telling them to go and deliver the bad news.