'It's been a Hell of an 18 months, as I've watched an increasing number of colleagues gather their belongings (if they were lucky enough to be given the chance) and march off the premises, never to be seen inside the firm again.

Some of them deserved to get the boot, others were just unlucky. But all had that haunted look that seems to permeate the building when we learn that yet another round of job cuts is in the air. We've had three major culls now, and it doesn't get any easier. At first there was a lot of gallows humor, but as a lot of the guys who were big on gallows humor got the boot first-time round, that mostly stopped. Then there was a lot of bravado - 'It's only a job', 'I could do with a few months off', 'The firm's going bankrupt, anyway'. And finally came the acceptance - a lot of staff were getting the chop, it wasn't very pleasant, and the prospects outside the firm weren't that good either. So, for weeks at a time, we all walked around like the living dead, never knowing whether the latest trade would be the last.

Well, it's all gone a bit quiet on the job-loss front lately. After a decent first-quarter's performance, and encouraging noises about April and May, all thoughts of financial meltdown are long behind us - Hell, we're even talking about repaying the TARP funding! But is all this too good to be true, and are we all being lulled into a false sense of (job) security ?

Is the global economy really bottoming out, and will firms stay the course, keeping costs in line, but headcount intact ? Or are there more job losses on the horizon ? The bears and bulls are fighting it out, the economic optimists are hanging their hats on any piece of good news (news that is 'less bad' is even cause for celebration!), whist the economic naysayers insist that there is still too much uncertainty out there, and that there is a strong probability that we're on our way back to economic and financial armageddon.

Governments around the world are probably all-in - the current economic stimuli are probably all they can sensibly afford anyway. And politicians around the world are keeping their fingers crossed that, given time and a bit of good luck, all will be well. But the truth is, no-one can say with any degree of certainty what lies ahead. We are all at-sea in unchartered waters. The first-half of the year ended up a bit better than most feared - although many thousands of jobs were lost, conditions do appear to have stabilised. Having said that, the second-half of the year could turn out to be worse than many expect. Time to keep your head down. It's all in the lap of the Gods'.

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