Call it the year of finding equilibrium or the return to logic. They both fit. The year 2007 was one of those years in business when bad decisions finally caught up with everybody. It’s a year we will remember not because it was so great but because we learned many lessons from it. I’m referring, of course, to the housing market downturn which has sent ripples throughout the entire national and local economy as well as caused a near meltdown at one of our largest companies, Calabasas-based Countrywide Financial. Obviously, this is the big story of the past year. A story that was difficult for us to cover at the Business Journal mainly because it was covered so heavily on a daily basis by all media outlets large and small. What could we add to it once every two weeks that hadn’t already been said? We decided that the best way to cover it was to focus on the layoffs that were occurring and the impact they were having on employees and the local communities. Unfortunately, the layoffs were just a byproduct of the bad decisions that the mortgage industry took part in for the last several years in focusing too much on sub-prime loans. Anybody could have seen this disaster coming. Giving a lot of money to people who really don’t qualify to receive it is a bad business decision. Absolutely amazing that it happened in the first place. And logic and sanity returned in 2007 to stop all this from happening anymore at least for awhile. The whole overheating of the housing market to obscene price levels in recent years defies logic. It has happened many times in the past. What goes up always comes down in business cycles. Reason and logic took over and things started to change. That’s the great thing about the world of business and business cycles. But each cycle has to run its course. The retail sector was constantly battling uncertainty in 2007 in part because of the housing downturn. Fewer people had money to spend than in previous years because there were fewer and fewer housing transactions where the seller made a huge profit. What were other news stories of note in 2007 that will be worth remembering? – The troubles at Thousand Oaks-based Amgen. This biotech behemoth at times has seemed invincible. But in 2007 that all changed when the world of regulation caused the company tremendous hardship and this resulted in massive layoffs. A realignment of our local biotech industry could also occur because of this. – The greening of business. There was a greater focus on the environment in 2007 and some local companies that had been toiling away in obscurity with “green” products were beginning to make some headway. – Absolute frustration over our horrendous traffic. Businesspeople I have talked to and the public officials who make all the decisions seem to slowly be coming around to realizing that our gridlock is hurting our economy making employees less productive and making goods movement much more difficult and that there will be many more negative effects if we don’t get a better handle on it. We need to upgrade infrastructure and truly make public transportation more efficient. Now. I still don’t see a crisis atmosphere on this issue and there should be one. There were many more stories that brought 2007 to life and we discuss many of them in our year-end review this issue. And like any other years, we should learn lessons from 2007 and let those lessons help make a better 2008. Business Journal Editor Jason Schaff can be reached at (818) 316-3125 or at [email protected].