Starbucks and the Economic Crisis

by Richard Florida

The Seattle Times Jon Talton suggests the coffee-maker's ongoing financial problems may be an "artifact" of deeper economic troubles:

What if Starbucks is an artifact of an economy that's not coming back? A time of rising, if fleeting, American affluence as we moved from dot-coms and telecoms, to day trading and house flipping, all based on the biggest run-up of debt in the history of the world. For this venti, triple-shot America, it might have been the quintessential bubble drink.