Executives say "whoa' to spending in uncertain economy. (Spotlight: Michigan corporate officers)

The map might say you've got a mile left of paved highway. But when you're sliding throug a muddy, dirt road, forget the map. You know it's time to step on the brakes.

The mend and women at the helms of Michigan's publicly traded and fastest-growing privately held companies have been standing on the brakes to their companies' operations since at least this past September.

The nation's economic mapmakers may have been hemming and hawing then about whether or not we were technically in a recession. But the people steering Michigan's top companies had seen sales and earnings growth end months before.

In fact, Michigan's corporate leaders started applying the brakes a year ago, when they reported in the 1990 Michigan 100 Business Confidence Index survey the most pessimistic outlooks and business plans for the upcoming year since surveys taken during the recession years of the early 1980s.

But this year, they've slowed even more.

The 10th annual Business Confidence Index survey of the senior officers of the Michigan Public and Private 100 companies was conducted in September by the Michigan offices of the national public accounting firm of BDO Seidman and the Detroit public relations firm of Durocher & Co. The survey took place before the November election and before President Bush's deficit reduction package.

* Most of Michigan's senior corporate officers (almost 57 percent) said they're cautious about prospects for Michigan's economy. About 43 percent indicated they were cautious about the new year's outlook for their own businesses. The results were the least optimistic since the very first Business Confidence Index survey in 1981, the middle of the last recession.