There’s a local bank here which didn’t lay off a single worker (they even promised to) during the 98 financial crisis, and emerged as the best decorated bank with outstanding service and increasing profit.

Reducing cost may not be the only answer to financial crisis.

to move the office to cheaper location is fine, but what you do if you have a year or two still running on your lease contract and your landlord will not back away ? moving to cheaper place may not be possible or may be very very expensive …

people - in a big company there often are more people than the company needs … just look around how many people have to blog and read blogs during their “office” time because they can. clearly they have too much time. That means there are too many people in that company and some can be let go In those companies to downsize is possible, but depending on the labour laws it also may not be cheap …

in small companies that often employ even less people than they should, there simply may not be anyone who can be let go …

I would add one more item to your list - Customers - sometimes some clients are too costly to service. If we can afford it, we do not mind, we hope one day the nice treatment will pay back. In times of crisis when we count every cent and make sure our manpower is well utilized, sometime ditching a client or two may actually help, no matter how illogical it sounds