When I look back at the last ten years, I can't help but think about how our economy was growing and our real estate prices were climbing higher by the hour (some offers would push prices higher due to competition from other buyers). The Federal Reserve was worried. They wanted to push rates higher, because they wanted to stop prices from going higher. Do you remember? Now I've been thinking. The Federal Reserve continued to harp on the fact that real estate prices had to stop going upward. So, they decided to raise interest rates. Suddenly, prices started to go down. Way down. But what else happened? Homeland Security would scare the hell out of us on a weekly basis. "THE THREAT LEVEL WAS RAISED TODAY...." Or another headline about some white powder was found on the end of Clinton's nose and everyone better run for cover. Oops, he just came back from doing an interview and the make up girl gave him too much powder. That's all. Whew. So you see, everyone was running scared. We scared ourselves into two costly and major wars. We scared ourselves into the greatest recession this country ever experienced. In some places, the housing sector was hit harder than it was back in the Great Depression. For example, the Central Valley in California has seen dramatic price drops of at least 50-60% in housing prices, some homes are down as much as 70% right now (links are provided to the right of this blog). In the Great Depression, I believe 30% was the percentage to beat. The Central Valley housing market was the epicenter of the housing foreclosure mess. Unemployment topped near 20%, one in five were without a job. Probably even higher. This is an area from Bakersfield to Sacramento. The population stands at 6.3 million people and climbing. The size of the Central Valley is a little less than West Virginia. In 2020, if the Central Valley were it's own state, it would rank around 17th in population. The Valley feeds the world. Some of the world's best soil is located there. But it also has the most polluted skies too. The Central Valley has many problems to overcome. The sad irony is that President's and Presidential candidates seem to ignore the Valley. If any part of our country needs special attention, it's the Central Valley. We need to maintain the Central Valley's status as a farming capital as well as providing better educational resources to it's citizens. And they need higher paying jobs. It's a delicate balance (Central Valley leaders want better jobs without hurting the ag sector), but if we start region by region, we could turn this economy around. I realize our country is in the control of big business. In order for workers to be able to afford housing, something was bound to happen. And you know that big business wasn't about to give their workers 100-200% raises to help pay for those rising home prices. But what if, the home prices were affordable again? Big business could still rake in some profits and not worry about their workers being able to afford a home. And what if, bigger names could come in and gobble up smaller names? You know, such as, Wells Fargo buying out Wachovia. I believe Wells was given 25 Billion in bail out money. And of course they purchased Wachovia for 15.1 Billion Dollars. Part of the agreement was said to be that Wells could not use government assistance in buying out Wachovia. Hmm. The problem here is that I believe the bail out came first and about a month later here comes the sale, not 100% sure, but it looked like it was a safe bet that Wells would come out stronger than ever before. Meanwhile, homeowners were having a difficult time meeting their obligations and the banks were slow to make changes or better known as "loan mods". All in all I believe the bail outs went to the wrong parties. I believe the American people deserve those bail outs if anyone did. In closing, while I believe we need to rid the world of terrorism, it's my opinion, those who control our economy did more harm to our country, than all of the terrorists combined in the world today.
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