Hard times.

• Author: Kinney, David
• Position: UPFRONT

Except when I'm in a bind and prevail upon someone to pinch-hit, I have dutifully performed the task of writing this monthly column going on 22 years now. Over the course of a couple of decades, I might be excused for retreading certain tiresome topics, especially on the rare occasion the reason is not mental sloth but the simple fact that if business is a magazine's meat, some of what it must chew is cyclical.

This is the third recession during my time as BUSINESS NORTH CAROLINA'S chief editor, though the experts say there's not been a financial crisis the like since the Great Depression. Just how bad is it? For our annual Business Handbook issue, that's the question we asked people who should know: our new governor and leaders in 10 of the state's top industries. What we found--and what you will learn on the pages that follow--is that they don't sugarcoat the year ahead, but neither are they a chorus of Cassandras. Nobody believes, dire as these days might be, that we'll wind up reliving the 1930s. I concur, even though as I write this, the stock market just closed, on the day a president takes office to usher in a new era, with Bank of America trading down to little more than $5 a share.

One way these times do echo those: The Depression made heroes of bank robbers; people now want to brand certain bank bosses as badmen. After all, some of them have lost investors a lot more money than J. Edgar Hoover's most-wanted...