The Economy.. will hi end audio mfgs lower prices?

Bombaywalla, you beat me to it.
Abucktwoeighty, I agree. CEOs maximizing short term profits with no concern for the future isn't necessarily in capitalism's best.

Heres my thoughts since we are in a hi end hobby expect luxury tax from the liberal movement soon. With a large part of our taxes going to illegals and citizens that are on welfare it leaves us the working sheepel to pay for all of this big government spending. Hope i'm wrong, from what i've seen so far we are in Big Trouble moving from a free market country to a socialist society. We will have a state run audio company who will provide us with gear.

Better listen to your music now while you can before the bubble bursts.

If you are the shareholder of a public corp. you want a good rate of return of your investment. In the US, cost of materials, labor, medical insurance, workman compensation....etc... these increasing overhead expenses will decrease your net earning per share. You have two choices : 1. jack up your price on the same product to keep the same rate of return of investment and running a risk of loosing cutomers to competitions or 2. Find a backward country or countries where labor is cheaper, medical insurance is affordable....to get a better profit and there is nothing wrong with making a profit in a trade of for the risk of an investment. It's a simple concept of economics 101. Red or Blue, you face the same problems. The question is would you'd rather have a temporary solution to a permanent problem or you want to survive ?

Will there be a shake-out in high end audio? Will we continue to see $10k preamps and $30k amps?

If the "banksters" keep paying themselves average bonuses of $112,000 then I expect $30K amps will continue to sell easily (especially if taxpayer bailouts foot the bill). The only question is how sustainable is all this? I mean how long can taxpayers continue to bailout financial institutions so that their employees can easily buy a $30K amp each year?