A Trillion Dollars Looks Something Like This

If you enjoy a good fright, then you'll love this.

By the way, the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States is printing up about $1.2 trillion more US dollars this week. Thanks Ben!

The United States federal budget deficit is estimated to be $1.845 Trillion!.

Not to be outdone, President Barrack Obama's multi-year federal budget proposal is $3.6 trillion!

My fellow Americans, prepare for the spending power of whatever few dollars you do earn and have saved to be utterly and completely destroyed by rampant inflation. The tools to stop it are broken.

Thank you, incompetent and greedy homedebtors and real estate investors everywhere. Thank you mortgage brokers. Thank you realtors. Hope it was all worth it.

So You Drive an SUV?!

If you drive an SUV, ok you do look cool. But you are getting absolutely hosed right now in a big way, aren't you.

Damn!

Today, gasoline in Lake Forest, California is now $4.55 per gallon (87 octane)!

In Orange County, the average price is $4.58 per gallon (87 octane)!

A week ago? $.4.40

A month ago? $3.89

A year ago? $3.19

Man, it must really suck. But since SUV drivers really want to look cool, but prefer the Bill Clinton era fuel prices, yet still don't want to crimp their OC lifestyles, why not go electric with your next vehicle?

Being OC-cool and going alternative power with your wheels are no longer mutually exclusive concepts. Check out the 2008 Tesla Roadster from Tesla Motors of California. You can order one today.

100% Electric powered

o to 60 mph in 3.9 (would blow the doors off most SUVs)

13,000 rpm redline

135 mph (It's OK. You can cry.)

220 mile range per charge (requires 3 hours to charge in normal electric socket) ($0.02 per mile).

Price? $100,000

OK, scoff if you want. Our grandchildren will be laughing at our silly asses for driving carbon-fueled SUVs, much like you laughed at your own parents/grandparents for using a typewriter at their 1970s and 1980s office job.

Besides, we need to develop a sense of humor about all this because, $6.00/gallon gas is exactly the two-by-four-across-the-face that we Americans need to wake up, innovate, lead the world, and unlock our economy's full growth potential. If you based your small business or your household budget on the availability of cheap gasoline, you better be ready to embrace change or be Darwinized. The idea that must continue down the same course with our energy policy because that's the way it's always been done is ludicrous and insanity defined. We've followed the innovative spirits of BP and Exxon and GM and Ford long enough. They've given us $5.00/gallon gasoline, the Ford Mustang, and the Chevy Tahoe SUV. GM and Ford will both be bankrupt by 2010 and so will we, if we don't change.

The GDP of the United States has been shackled by poor government policy in Washington, lack of innovation in the hearland, and economic dependency on foreign nations for our energy. These foreign nations want to destroy us due to our infidelic way of life which is unlike there own, and now wish to exploit America's Achilles' heel to the fullest.

And here's the best part.

We let them.

We must become independent of other nations to secure future economicy prosperity.
America should start to retrofit it's vehicles and engines to clean power sources now and not wait.

Will it be painful? Yes.

Will there be numerous job losses? Very likely.

There could be numerous new jobs and professions as well that cannot be outsourced.

The losses might be no different than what happened to all of the coopers, buggy whip salesmen and blacksmiths.

Let the prices of oil climb to $10.00 per gallon. It should. By 2028 the oil for gasoline be gone.

The price of sand and glass is going to eventually plummet.

Mr. Lawrence Yun of the N.A.R. Weighs In Again

Mr. David Lereah was the Chief Economist of the National Association of Realtors (N.A.R.). Now that Lereah is pulling the ripcord and escaping the N.A.R. before the house literally burns down, Mr. Lawrence Yun, the Senior Economist of the N.A.R. steps up in his new flame-retardant suit.

He's not just a "senior economist". He's the freaking Managing Director of Quantititative Research for the National Association of Realtors.

OK, but who is this Mr. Yun really?

Does he have some fresh or even forthright comments about the state of the American housing market?

Will he come clean about the N.A.R. being a cartel driven by realtor sales commission earnings and sales strategies, not consumer education, market principles, business ethics, and operating as "trusted advisor"?

The answer is a resounding no.

Mr. Yun is a Lereah lacky. In February of 2007, he echoed Lereah's comments about the true state of the American market. If one were to follow this N.A.R. quantitative propeller head around all day, he'd have real estate consumers believing that the market bottom was hit 4 months ago and that everyone should get ready for a recovery later in the year:

"Sales will recover gradually over the second half of the year and prices will begin to edge up again"

Mr. Yun was wrong in February. He and the N.A.R. are wrong again now.

The U.S. economy is slowing down significantly, the U.S. dollar is approaching an all-time low in value versus the Euro and the British Pound, U.S. inflation remains completely unchecked by the United States Federal Reserve Commission, fuel prices in the United States are approaching unchartered territory at almost $4.00 per gallon in California, a jaw-dropping number of mortgage lenders have been completely or partially destroyed, surviving lenders have restricted their lending standards substantially, HELOC loans are down by 20% year to date and subprime and Alt-A loan foreclosures are rocking the entire industry - and we haven't even explored the probabilities that prime loans may also weigh in badly before the year is out.

To Mr. Yun and members of the National Association of Realtors: It's time for someone from your decrepit organization to step up to the plate and tell it like it is.