Saturday, September 22, 2007

Our real estate market not the only one going "bust"

You think our housing market is crumbling? Take a trip to Baghdad. Due to ongoing insurgent violence and civil war, housing prices have taken a freefall, after soaring back in 2003 after the initial U.S. invasion brought hopes of stability and foreign investment. Is this a Bush thing? He's the "decider" of both the U.S. and Iraq. Both countries have a crumbling real estate market and a dysfunctional government.

A couple of weeks ago on "Real Time", Bill Maher asked a New York Times reporter stationed in Baghdad a very interesting question; more or less, it went like this: What if Iraqis were asked the same question that Ronald Reagan asked of Americans in 1980, "are you better off now than you were four years ago?" I forget the man's answer, but if the plummeting housing prices and Iraqis being forced out of their homes by militias is anything to go by at all, I'd have to think that the answer to that question would be a resounding "no."

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