Greg,
Few things are more important than the condition of our economy and its effects on the things we hold dear. Perhaps we are beating a dead horse to death, but for someone like me who has lived in three different parts of our great country, seen more than a couple serious downturns, and studied the Great Depression in some detail, I am aghast at how little understanding and knowledge we seem to have as a people. If it takes constant repetition to get get a few fundamentals through our thick skulls, then so be it. Over-consumption, i.e. the acquisition of things beyond our financial means, is at the heart of our troubles and doubling down as we are doing will only make things worse. The emperor has no clothes and the sooner we admit so publicly and adamantly the sooner we'll be on our way to a sustainable recovery.
Mike H,
There is an interesting article in yesterday's WSJ about the Candy brothers in the UK. There was one also about another type of real estate- chicken coops- which are driving their owners into bankruptcy. If residential golf was the only elephant in our closet we could all sleep much easier.
I understand that there is still around $1.75 trillion in subprime and Alt A loans out there coming up for interest rate adjustments. If the government bails out the debtors, what is there to stop all other homeowners to simply stop paying their mortagage and get in on the action? How far is a collapse in commercial real estate down the pike? I've heard that there has been considerable short selling of REITs and with all those hated CEOs laying people off, how much office, retail, and manufacturing space is needed?
BTW, I lived down the street (well, highway) from a course built in the 100 year flood plain with all the tees and greens raised several feet above that level. Surprisingly, in the mid to late 80's, three "100 year floods" occured within two years and the only way one could tell that the flood plain contained a golf course was that the top of a couple of the flags peaked through the water. Though we live in very volatile times, the course is still there and, I suspect, our economy will struggle through as well. The questions are how hard do we want to make things and how much of the long term are we willing to sacrifice for short term gains. Just how many IVs can we put in the golden goose before we bleed the sucker dry?