While I normally focus on digital and social media, my focus has been completely distracted by the current economic turmoil and political season. The world is facing a very difficult challenge that will likely result in many disruptive changes for everyone. I wanted to get my thinking straight on some of this stuff and I thought I would share. I hope you find it useful. If you have thoughts you would like to add, please leave a comment.

I see 7 major trends affecting consumers, businesses, investors and governments that will result in major changes from the way things have been. It's going to create new winners and losers. For those with a ready mind and the ability to invest it will mean big opportunities. Let me know what your think.

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The NY Times put out a press release this morning announcing its earnings. Quite a sad situation, the Grey Lady is dying and if they don't figure out some massive change there will be some type of forced restructuring.

On the positive side, their internet revenues grew 6.7% to reach $87 million. The bad news however is the continued plunge in print advertising which was down by 15.9%. The net result is that overall revenues dropped by 8.9% to $687 million. They have cut costs by 6.7%, but the death spiral continues.

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Jason Calacanis, CEO and founder of Mahalo, has managed to turn layoffs into link bait for himself and Mahalo. Mahalo is a self described next generation search engine (more realistically an about.com business model with freelance/contract editors and writers). Some months ago Mr. Calacanis decided to stop blogging and communicate with his readers through an email newsletter. The newsletter has grown to many thousands of followers.He has written about the impact of the financial crisis on startups and done a good job telling it like it is.His most recent email went into deep detail about the cuts he has made at his own company, the logic behind it and how he dealt with the situation.

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