Okay, everybody, take a deep breath. The news is bad–but not that bad, at least locally. There was a general sense of panic conveyed by media outlets, including our own, at yesterday’s layoff news by both Boeing and Starbucks. But bear in mind that those big layoff figures are national. It was actually not news that Boeing will lay off approximately 5,000 locally. That had already been reported three weeks ago. (The news is that there will be 5,000 more layoffs nationally.) And of those 6,700 whom Starbucks will lay off, we know of just 350 that will occur here. Let’s not feed a downward spiral with an inflated sense of panic or we really will get the “economic earthquake” that The Seattle Times told us today already hit.