The Moment

摘要

For all the dazzle of the digital age, never forget the essential economic undertaking: busting rocks and moving dirt. You can't have Silicon Valley without first digging up the silicon, and even the smartest building starts out as a hole in the ground. So the news that Caterpillar is laying off 5,000 workers-bringing its total of recent layoffs to 20,000-only confirms that the economic contagion is spreading, from the executive floors of high finance to the bedrock world of tractors and dump trucks.