While the domestic market began growing, export-oriented companies were retrenching.

Indeed, the company, based in San Francisco, is retrenching, however slightly, its seemingly ubiquitous flagship chain.

As companies retrench, they are expected to sublet their surplus office space in downtown Manhattan, providing potential bargains for a minority of tenants still on the growth track.

Then, when the stars change alignment and investors decide to withhold new financing, many companies are cash-poor and must retrench or shut down.

As many companies retrench, tens of thousands of new customers will be coming State Farm's way in the next few years.

Rather, the danger is that the company will retrench artistically because fiscal wisdom dictates that no major new production proceed until financing is already in place.

But even there, the company has retrenched.

And he noted that such fringe benefits for employees have historically been one of the first things to go when companies retrench in difficult economic times.

Part of the dot-com bubble, the company's stock price collapsed the next year, and the company retrenched for several years before ceasing operations in 2008.

That is unlikely to happen soon since companies are retrenching and moving operations offshore, where costs are much cheaper.