The Low Hanging Fruit...

Ok, the first thing to look at is that there will be some obvious areas where spending will go up because of the current shift in the economy - the low hanging fruit. Let's go ahead and get those out of the way: 

• Bankruptcy attorneys will do well now. 
  
• There is a company that specializes in bankruptcy and other legal software: Epiq Systems. They are reporting that in 2008, their business doubled from 2007. 
• Car parts and car repair shops will do well now. I just spoke with a friend today who deals in car repairs, and he confirmed that the small shops are doing a booming business. First of all, people are getting their car repaired instead of purchasing a new one. Also, with the large car dealers going out of business every day, people have to go to the small shops to get their repairs done.
• Oil - yep, they seem to still be making plenty of profit. 
• Pre-paid legal - apparently that one is on the rise. I'm at a loss to explain that one, so I'll have to look into that. 
• Amazon.com reported it's fourth-quarter profit to be up 9% and was ahead of the forecasted profit. It seems that everyone did their holiday shopping there instead of avoiding the short lines at the shopping malls. 
• And even though toy sales were down, the good old childhood favorite - Legos - reported a 32% rise in profits. I suppose when the chips are down, the legos go up! As as aside, I did not realize that Lego is a family owned Danish company. Here is an article about it in businessweek

Next time, I'll be looking into to other areas where the spending is going in today's economy. For now, I just wanted to go ahead and pick the low hanging fruit.