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(Reuters) Fear of a deepening recession is spreading throughout corner offices across corporate America, prompting chief executives in all sectors to slash thousands of jobs as they scramble to find ways for their companies to survive the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
AT&T Inc and DuPont Co led the list on Thursday of blue-chip US companies laying off workers in the weeks before the Christmas holiday. A number of surveys showed that CEOs were planning more cuts, as a measure of corporate chieftains’ confidence fell to a record low. The pace of the cuts left even some US CEOs wondering if things were going too fast. “The idea of a company that’s earning money, not losing money, that’s not, let’s say ‘industrially endangered,’ to have just cutbacks so they can earn another US$12mil or US$20mil or US$40mil in a year where no one’s counting is really a horrible act,” said Barry Diller, CEO of Internet media company IAC/Interactive Corp. “It’s certainly not necessary,” Diller said at the Reuters Media Summit in New York. “It’s doing it at the worst time, it’s throwing people out to a larger, what is inevitably a larger unemployment heap, for frankly no good reason.” The Business Roundtable’s quarterly CEO Economic Outlook Index tumbled to 16.5 in the quarter, the biggest drop it has ever taken, to the lowest point by far in the survey’s six-year history. A reading below 50 means that CEOs expect contraction rather than growth. The index had stood at 78.8 in the third quarter. Top US phone company AT&T said it would eliminate 12,000 jobs, chemical maker DuPont announced it aims to cut 2,500 positions and auto parts maker Hayes Lemmerz International Inc disclosed plans to reduce its headcount by about 1,700. Viacom Inc, SanofiAventis, Constellation Energy Group, Steelcase Inc, AbitibiBowater Inc, UTi Worldwide Inc and Windstream Corp also unveiled job cut plans.
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The only way to achieve this is to change our government. Stop the bleeding!