In the fall of 1999, I relocated, due to my husband's job transfer from Greater Boston to what are known as "The Western Suburbs". I guess that they are known as "The Western Suburbs" because there is nothing in particular to be said for them, except for the indisputable fact that they are west of Boston. While attempting to adjust to my new semi-rural lifestyle which seemed to consist of driving all day due to suburban sprawl, I could not help but notice that prices for homes in the Western Suburbs, in spite of the undeniable drawbacks of the area (terrible heroin addiction problem, poor housing stock, illegal alien problem, lack of any kind of jobs except for working-at-the-mall-cocktail-waitressing-landscaping-burger-flipping - although the latter is pretty much true of most of the US) as I say, in spite of the drawbacks the housing prices seemed outrageous compared to Boston, where an actual real job can occasionally still be found. I lived then and do to this day in a Garden Apartment Complex (translation for foreign readers:shithole).

Month by month, I watched the housing prices climb. And yet the people still bought. And then there were the "refi's" Refinance your house! Send your kids to college! Remodel your house! It'll be worth even more! SUV's sprouted in driveways like weeds growing through cracked asphalt. Every other corner in the town centers, it seemed, was occupied by a purveyor of granite kitchen countertops or marble bathrooms. And yet, during the same period, there were layoffs at the few good places to work in the area and one of the largest employers moved away entirely. There was no upward pressure on housing. "Eureka" I said to myself, "It's a bubble".

Now one would think, because I basically have a first rate second rate mind, that older and wiser persons than myself would rapidly have come to the same conclusion. But, they did not. All of a sudden, at the public library and the lottery ticket counter, there was but one topic: buying these overpriced dumps and "flipping" them, in other words putting on vinyl siding and new fronts on kitchen cabinets, painting everything white, and selling the shack for a 35% markup. At first, I am sure, some people made money - real money - doing this. Unfortunately as a great man once said, "Once you hear about something it's already over" By the time the bubble started to run out of steam a year and a half ago a lot of people were holding property they had bought for speculative investment - i.e. flipping - that they could neither sell nor continue to make mortgage payments on as it was worth a fraction of what they paid for it. Amongst their ranks is one of my nephews.

                                          Great Housing Myths

1. The price of a house always goes up. Well, if anyone is around who still believes this one he needs to have his head examined. During The Great Depression in 1929 housing tanked and did not even begin to recover until 1946 - seventeen years later. People in "the reality based community" that strange little man in the White House is always babbling about feel this particular housing slump will probably have a similar time span.

2. A house is an investment. Yes, and it's a pretty lousy one. In the last 50 years stocks, bonds, CD's and hiding your money in the mattress all beat housing as good investments. Would you like to know how much the price of a home has appreciated in real terms since 1900? 5%. That's right, that is not a typo. FIVE PERCENT. A house is a home, not a way to make money.

3. Everyone should aspire to become a homeowner. Why? If you want a house buy one. If you don't, don't. I saved my money and invested it instead of plumping for the $400,000 bungalow. In the eight years that I have lived here my rent has not been raised one time, and there was no month when my investments did not make more money in interest than my rent - sometimes 10 times as much. I live for free. Heed the words of the wise- "if you owe them money you have to pay them interest. If they owe you money they have to pay you interest" 

I have heard a lot of talk- most of which makes me really nervous - about the government bailing these homeowners who are about to be foreclosed on out. This talk makes me really angry. In the first place anything that is a mixture of government and the free market is invariably a catastrophe. Think of Health Care, think of the price of college tuition due to the explosion of "student aid". And now housing? I do not want to see my tax dollars go to bail out fools who made $35,000 a year and bought a $700,000 home. You can't buy things you can't pay for. Also, so many of these people were speculators who tried to time the market and flopped. This is what is known as the "Greater Fool" theory. No matter how much of a stupe you were you'll find an even bigger stupe to take the overpriced rathole off your hands at an even more outrageous price than the one you were dumb enough to pay. I don't see why these people deserve help. They all (including my own nephew) thought that they were going to put one over on someone, and instead someone put one over on them. Good, I say. You can't cheat an honest man.

Also, let's be frank here. It is about time that the price of the family home began to reflect the globalization-induced free trade new low-wage American economy. No one should be paying more than twice his yearly wage for a home. This is classical economics. If the median family income in an area is $45,000 then the median price for a home in that area should be about $90,000 - no more. I believe with the reality of the way things actually are in America today - instead of the way our despots in Washington would like to have us believe - a collapse of housing prices would help more people in the long run than it hurt. In closing, remember the wisdom of the Wampanoag Indian Tribe: " In the end none of us really owns anything. We are all renters"

There was good news this morning in the declaration from the Air Force that the entire fleet of F-15 fighter planes has been grounded due to the fact that the fleet in in such bad shape that one of the planes disintegrated in mid-air. This is another nail in the coffin in the belief that seems to be an article of faith with some people, that before it leaves office the Bush- Cheney regime will start a war with Iran. Frankly I think they'll just keep rattling that saber all the way out the door as they limp back to Texas and Wyoming respectively. It makes them feel powerful, it keeps the issue of "The Great War on Terror" on the table so that the Democratic Congress and Presidential candidates have to keep on discussing it, and, since 51% of the American populace now believes that Iran is threatening the US with a nuclear missile it will ensure that the Fear Vote comes out in November '08. Hell, the Republicans might even manage to hold on to the White House, thus ensuring that Bush and Cheney do not have to carry the frame for handing the White House over to the Democrats. That "verdict of history" that Bush keeps babbling about might not be as bad as it could be.

Last week also got interesting when a top admiral stated that war with Iran would happen "over my dead body". My understanding is that the last time the Navy played "War Games" with Iran, guess who lost a brand-new flattop carrier. Guess who lost the war. I think in the Navy they call this "mutiny".

Back in the reality-based community of people who have actually gone to Annapolis and West Point and the Air Force Academy and have fought in real wars and sent men to die, there is an unanimous opinion that a clean surgical strike on Iran could create so much blowback that it could make our "cakewalk" in Iraq look like, well, a cakewalk. Are you ready for the three hundred dollar barrel of oil? Are you ready for no oil at all? Of course the first thing the Iranians would do in the first three days of any real war is to block the Straits of Hormuz, either by sinking an American ship with a Silkworm missile, or by sinking one of their own ships specially put out there for the purpose.

Also, as I have stated before, so much money has been spent on things like recreating American mall food-courts in Baghdad inside the Green Zone and paying truck-drivers $125,000.00 a year to drive trucks through Iraq, with huge no-bid contracts literally being thrown at Blackwater and Halliburton, that there is literally no money in the defense budget for boring old things like ordnance, bullets, or maintenance of fleets of planes that were supposed to last us until 2025. There has been no planning for any kind of war at all. I don't know how you can even continue in Iraq without the fighter planes, although I am sure the bombers have been used more consistently. You really can't expand the war into Iran without the F-15's, although some of the newer F-22's have of course been delivered and are being used. Remember how we used to laugh at the Commies? Oh,they are such losers and their economy is so bad that they can't even get their rusting hulks of ships out of port. Well, now it's our turn. We are such losers we can't put our rusting hulks of planes into the air. Of course those who see war with Iran coming at them from all directions will now say that the US will use nuclear missiles on Iran and just run away. No fighter jets, flattops or even troops required. These people are leaving one important factor out: Putin. 

Once upon a time the Cold War ended, the Berlin Wall fell and there was a golden opportunity for world peace and prosperity. The Russian Bear embraced capitalism, and begged to become an American ally. How did the US respond to these Russian overtures for peace? By moving NATO right up onto Russia's front door, including former Warsaw Pact countries. The US is still even trying to get the Ukraine, Russia's breadbasket for centuries, into the NATO fold. This is the same kind of brilliant behavior, a breathtaking mix of arrogance and stupidity, that caused the idiotic Versailles Treaty and led to the rise of Adolph Hitler.

Is it any wonder that Putin finally said "Nyet"? He has traveled to Iran recently and has invited Ahmadinejad on a state visit to Moscow. He is selling the Iranians anti-aircraft missiles. Putin has put the Bear in the air again: Russian Bear bombers are flying right up to the edge of American airspace. Can a military alliance between Iran, Syria, Russia, and quite possibly Turkey, enraged by America's coddling of PKK terrorists in Kurdistan, be far behind? We'll see how well dropping nukes on the Iranians goes down with Putin. Of course Bush has the brains of a flea, but I don't think that he's ready to meet his maker quite yet, in case Putin decides to retaliate by dropping a few nukes of his own. Besides, that way Bush might miss that "verdict of history" that he is so eager to see.