Clusterfuck

When the housing bubble breaks it could very likely begin with a puncture here in the Poconos. We continue to overbuild for a market mostly fueled by long range commuters. As gas and heating oil prices continue to go up, which they certainly will, steadily and for as long there is oil left, that growth will stall and then stop. Foreclosed homes will stand empty. The underpaid, non union construction workers that built them will be unemployed and their families will find it increasingly difficult to scrape by. The new roads and school construction rushed to keep up with unlimited growth forever will prove unnecessary and abandoned projects will leave behind only the bills to be paid by increased property taxes.

I expect my two small houses, side by side and a four mile walk to the nearest store, to lose value all the way to worthlessness.

You can’t fuel growth infinitely with a finite resource. You would think, sooner or later, someone would include this obvious fact in planning the future.

As far as I can figure, the Bush/Cheney plan is to seize control of all the world’s energy resources, not for you and me, but for the everlasting comfort and enrichment of a very few elitist buddies at the top. We’ll get what trickles down.

For more gloom and doom you can visit one of the crown princes of gloom and doomdom here.

For a calmer, but no less pessimistic overview, go here.