February 4, 2008
Perspective on Real Estate
Cover: Business Week (Feb. 11): “Meltdown for Housing, The Worst Is Yet to Come”: The foolishness of consumers is more than matched by the greed of lenders. Getting bored? Too bad, but perspective has to remind and review the reasons for the condition we are in. Don’t let the election spinners confuse you. The economy is in a tailspin. Yes, it could be worse and it will become worse as this New Year grows older, no matter what the stock market hype seems to mean. The FED has reached its point of how much it can help. The Fed’s chief is much more activistic than the last one.
The condition of housing is non-cyclical. it is more unique than imitative. Many people are trawling the jungle to see if and when they will buy. The number of foreclosures discourages lenders and lookers and there will be many more. Eventually, other parts of real estate will be affected, although not at present. Retail will be impacted by the slowed down consumer, as well as the seriousness of rapid-expanding unemployment.
Offices will also be affected, as well as recession-injured industrial and logistical. The great need and opportunity to promote business and employment would be infrastructure. It has been hurt by this administration’s laziness and Herbert Hoover act of slow response to everything but tax cuts. You just cannot cut taxes during war time when you need all income to promote armor and the tools of warfare. Bush has severely hurt our National Guard and all armed forces with his ignorance of economics, huge debt, imbalanced budgets and awful administration of the two wars.
His party is more to blame since they have allowed him to make more mistakes and repeat them over again. During war, generals can be relied on to back their commanders, no matter how little experience they have in warfare, and this man has none and is lazy besides. He may be comfortable figuring how much money he’ll be paid per speech after he is out of office, but the damage he has caused will last long after he is gone, especially if the Demos don’t fully control Congress. The Republicans will stay busy blaming the Democrats for all the country’s woes, but hopefully, the public will understand the truth!
Inflation will grow as a world problem, as wages rise in lower-paid economies, like India, Indonesia, Russia and China.
The main concern of voters will be to protect the Supreme Court from becoming another part of the Republican conservative movement, affecting the coming two generations, as well as the present!
srg
