Times are tough. The talking heads are going at it on CNN, and as of this writing, Congress is working on the big bailout following the greed-generated failure of several large financial institutions. There’s still debate about whether there’s a recession, but regardless, it feels like one, and my clients and prospects (and my consulting colleagues’ clients and prospects) are behaving as if it’s here.

I'll put on my technology-tinted glasses... Gartner says there won’t be a drop in IT spending for 2008, as reported in August in EZBizQ. However, my unscientific poll and perception of the trade news says IT budgets are coming under huge pressure. Silicon.com says half of its CIO jury has already prepared for a recession. Even if 2008 budgets remain unchanged, I wonder about 2009. In my opinion, cutting IT budgets is a bad idea -- it'll make your recovery harder -- but that's a topic for another post.

Back to the mess.... I suspect there will be substantial layoffs in the financial sector, including IT staff, followed by a ramp-up of IT work needed to unwind the mess these institutions got themselves into.

Unwind the mess? Let me explain. In a recent foreclosure case (for which I can't find a link), the homeowner claimed that the company foreclosing on his house did not have the right to do so because they couldn’t present the physical mortgage document; essentially he claimed they had to prove they were the rightful mortgage holders. He prevailed. Mortgages have been bundled, sold, re-bundled, and re-sold so many times it’s hard to know who actually owns them.

There's a huge project here, or more likely several of them.