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[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

> It is said that our physical selves are what we eat. My thought for  
> the day is that our minds are what we read, watch and listen to."
> 

Gene, you've expressed our skepticism about doomsayers before.  But just 
because we choose to ignore bad news for the sake of a peaceful disposition, 
it 
doesn't mean the bad news goes away.  In your list of poison subjects did you 
touch on the Housing Bubble?   For more than five years it was building and 
those who saw it coming, not from the fun of doomsaying or conspiracy 
theories, 
but from crunching the numbers, were poohed and derided as filling their 
minds 
with doomer garbage.

Guess what?  Turns out it was a bubble after all.  Except a few pockets of 
exception where the bursting is behind schedule, it was a nationwide bubble 
if 
not a world wide bubble.  Alan Greenspan has admitted as much and admitted 
that 
he knew it all along by saying that his term "froth" was a euphemism for 
"bubble."  Mortgage companies collapsing, congress scrambling to put together 
some 
weak attempt at a bail out, home builders going out of business,  run on the 
Northern Rock bank in Britian because of its holdings in US mortage notes, 
record rise in foreclosures, unprecedented drop in housing value .... I don't 
believe there is enough denial in the universe to say it wasn't the biggest 
housing bubble in history and the consequences are just beginning to unfold.

Turns out that being cheery and ingoring the signs that the bubble was about 
to burst didn't prevent it from bursting.

Same with Peak Oil and other such.  Ignoring it, declining to talk about it, 
won't make it go away.  

I can see friends agreeing to disagree and not bringing it up for the sake of 
a quiet visit.  But ignoring the unfolding of the world around?  As well to 
throw away the property tax bill because you don't want to deal with such 
depressing things, or fail to put in firewood for the winter because you 
don't want 
to think about it being cold.

Marie:"I don't think the problem is too much information. I think it ia no
response from our government to the horrible problems we face. "

Don't look too closely at the numbers then.  I'm not denying that there is no 
response from the government, in fact the government is at least complicit if 
not responsible for most of the problems.  But we've gone too far this time.  
We've painted ourselves into such a corner, governments do not have the 
resources to bail us out.

Before the housing bubble burst, several people (on different fora) commented 
that the government would't allow housing to slump, prices to go down, loans 
to default, because so much of the enconomy depened on housing.  But it did! 
(slump, go down, default).  Governments actually have only small influence 
over 
economy compated to the collective foolish choices.

James   </HTML>