I'm First Now!!

I was going to post last night, but I figured I'd let Debbie's post stay on top for at least twelve hours....

Anyway, after owning (and taking a bath on) two houses, I figured out what this guy figured out without losing $100K. There may be good political reasons to own a house, but the only way they make a good investment is if you ride a bubble. That's not to say that some people haven't made a killing by doing that, but, as everyone is finding out now, many more people get burned by bubbles than benefit from them. What we are seeing now is the tulip bulb craze writ large. (If you want a good illustration of how we never learn from history, read the entire entry on crashes.)

Early this morning, congress passed a bill to save us all from ourselves. Let's hope it works better than the Dutch government's attempt to save the tulip bulb market. We'll know in a few hours what the Asains think of it.

I also would like to point out something that Paolo Solari has been saying for nearly a half century: single family homes are extremely inefficient both in terms of energy use in the home and the transportation costs that are a direct result of the sprawl caused by everyone having a "right" to own a home. Tree-hugging granola-eaters take note: an energy-efficient single-family home is a complete misnomer (or, as Paolo will tell anyone who cares to listen, it is a "different kind of wrongness"). Our apartment, built in the 1960's with it's single-pane windows, uses less energy per square foot than any type of single-family home other than an underground home. And even then, you still have the issue of high energy use for transportation.

[Later]
I forgot to hit Publish before we walked downtown to pet all the doggies at Dog-Toberfest. I got some decent video of a couple of the fribee dogs that I'll stick up on Flickr at some point.

Lunch time!!