Am I good or what? One day after I predict that Iraq will descend into civil war the Shiite "Golden Dome" mosque is bombed and the headline on the Drudge Report says something like "bombing threatens civil war." Since this sectarian line has been crossed I have a hard time believing that a civil war in unavoidable.
The next day something happened that I think will really cause the economy to tumble and that is that Al Qaeda finally figured out that they could cause a lot of damage by bombing a Saudi oil facility, apparently they picked a good one, one that produces 7% of the world's oil. Image what would have happened had the succeeded. Osama has declared that he'll keep trying. My money is on him achieving his goal (not that I wish him success). Two nights ago I was playing pool with some friends and I was talking to an artist guy. He said he loved being an artist but he was going to take his savings and put it into real estate. I was aghast. Now is a horrible time to invest in real estate!! I spent the next hour telling him so. Then thanks to some illicits I spent more hours explaining to my friends (who are investing in real estate themselves) why the economy is going to tank. Now I know I'm annoying but a big part of me feels the need to shout from the rooftops "Save your money! Don't invest in real estate! avoid REITs! Get out of debt! The party is over!" Needless to say, nobody wants to hear it. Why would they? If I had my life savings in real estate the last thing I would want is somebody telling me the sky is going to fall. I realize this and I do try to show restriant, I swear I really do.
As a last thought (and to punctuate a possibe reason why the economy will tankify)let me leave you with the cover of Fortune Magazine which screamed at me tonight at the local Safeway:
"It is the instinctive wish of most American businesspeople, even those unlikely to be directly affected, that General Motors not go bankrupt. True, some people will say, "They had it coming to them." But the majority will be more practical, telling themselves that the company is so central to the economy, so sprawling in its commercial reach, that bankruptcy--"going into chapter," as restructuring folks say--is
ominous almost beyond contemplation. And yet the evidence points, with increasing certitude, to bankruptcy. Rick Wagoner, GM's 53-year-old chairman and CEO, may say, as he did in a January interview with FORTUNE in his aerie of an office high above the Detroit River, "I know that things will turn around." But he cannot know that. He may not, deep down, even believe it himself...."
