Yuck! Once again I had to fill up my car and deposit another $70+ to someone, somewhere making a nice buck. (Contact me when you are ready to invest $22,000,000 in a new Southern Nevada development a client of mine is raising capital for...It's only a day or two in profits for you...)
Everytime I go to the gas station, I think about the Fat Realtor on a Scooter post by Andrew Kyle in Calgary. I also often think about the Real Estate Dilemma post by Jim Crawford in Atlanta concerning real solutions to the current economy, more specifically, real estate.
When a writer for Bloomberg news contacted me some time back wanting to interview some of my clients about how falling real estate prices had changed their spending habits, our discussion evolved into how real estate for the past several years had kept the economy going and had finally caught up to us. The ATM machines went dry -- money stopped flowing from the cheap credit and now it is payback time.
Now, we have High energy prices and it's costing the U.S. Economy a lot of money in terms of jobs. As our leaders go back and forth in what seems to be more of a case of us against them (Democrats vs. Republicans) in trying to come up with solutions, it seems like it's just going to be more of the same unless something changes. We can donate all of the money we want to failing lenders that made some horrendous choices, but as long as jobs are being lost and our pockets are being drained, it's really not going to help real estate prices too much or get our economy back on track.
In case you don't follow the business channels, T. Boone Pickens has launched a new public awareness campaign and has been making some waves with a plan that certainly makes more sense to me then anything our leaders are coming up with. I checked out the new site that was launched by T. Boone Pickens at www.PickensPlan.com and found the video below quite disturbing. Specifically, the fact that $700 Billion dollars is leaving the United States each year for oil alone. That's quite a bit of money leaving the country -- money that I could certainly think of better places to go. (Real Estate!) Make sure you read about The Pickens Plan.
According to the Site:
"America is in a hole and it's getting deeper every day. We import 70% of our oil at a cost of $700 billion a year - four times the annual cost of the Iraq war.
Projected over the next 10 years the cost will be $10 trillion - it will be the greatest transfer of wealth in the history of mankind."
Now, I'm certainly no Tree Hugger but I certainly believe in doing the little things to help cut down on our use of energy. T. Boone is taking things even further with a new energy initiative and has launched an interactive blog site that people can sign up for and help spread the word. You can visit the Push The Pickens Plan, set up a member profile and then join the Real Estate Agents for The Pickens Plan group.
Once you've signed up and joined the group, you can link your blog posts about alternative energy from the comments section. (Did I mention that the site had over 100,000+ hits yesterday??) From your own blogs, if you think it's worth promoting, blog about it for further exposure to your local community.
Now, I've seen some great blog posts out there by some real estate agents that are on top of the Green Movement using alternative energy. Promote them even further and get some links to your posts by helping out in supporting a plan that has a solution to move forward.
T. Boone had a great quote:
"I'm not a very smart man but I've got a plan and that's better then a smart man with no plan"
Watch the video and do something.... or do nothing and expect more of the same. Personally, I would prefer to see $300 Billion stay in the United States ... And high paying jobs staying right here for the further advancement in the technology that is out there and just needs to be pushed along. (Great jobs mean people can buy Great Real Estate!)
Oh, in case you did not hear... The Abu Dhabi Fund Snapped up The Chrysler Building in New York. I wonder where they got the money?
Paul Francis, CRS | Coldwell Banker Premier | Las Vegas Real Estate
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