Saturday, May 3, 2008

Aliens in the desert and other scary stories

I’m sitting here in the southern desert wilderness of Arizona, parked in a 40 foot motor home contemplating my navel.
After passing through Roswell, NM and Meteor Crater, in Arizona I thought I might sit out under the stars and watch for aliens to land and pay us a visit.

I’m here to say, the aliens have landed! I saw them. While inside Grand Canyon state park I suddenly found myself surrounded by aliens, some of the worst sort – French, you know, from France!
My wife is also an alien – from Norway, a much better sort if you ask me.

Aliens exist and they have landed in the U.S. and are at this moment clogging our highways in their ‘Cruise America’ rental RVs, booking up all the available camping spaces and buying up everything that isn’t tied down. This while looking down upon us newly poor third world Americans with pity as they easily part with relatively small amounts of their superior currencies.
I hate them!

While traveling across the southern U.S. we had occasion to stop at a number of private and state parks only to find our neighbors were predominately from Europe. Nowhere so much as here, at the Grand Canyon. American tourist are solidly in the minority here as languages’ spoken around us seem to be mostly foreign (not English).

America is on sale and foreigners are buying, at least for now. Many that I have visited with seem blissfully unaware that there own economies are approaching the abyss as we speak. Many countries in the E.U. are beginning to choke as America, (the largest consumer nation on Earth) has gone into vapor lock. Their currencies’ nominally higher values are actually helping to drag their foreign economies closer to the edge, threatening them with an economic ‘Smack Down’ of epic proportions.

Some of these euphoric foreign spenders are even buying real estate in the US on the cheap, or so they think. This has the effect of temporarily arresting our current housing free-fall here but only fractionally.

I predict more pain abroad as foreigners find it is not poor America crashing but the whole global economy. I foresee a stiffer downturn, here and abroad as these same foreign real estate investors discover that they tried to catch a falling knife, (purchasing American real estate in free-fall) and then try to liquidate their investments when they discover their mistake then find they are trying to exit at the same time everyone else is. It won’t be pretty.

I see this beginning probably in July, as even now real estate values here and abroad are increasing their downward velocity and unemployment figures are on the rise in most industrialized nations. It’s only a matter of time before this affects their currencies. Lets face it, one fiat currency is as good as the next, because they have no real value except what the printers of said same claim they have.
Lets pause and think about that for a minute………..
Scary isn’t it?

Many other countries have worse housing markets and shakier economies than we in the U.S., and derivatives are ubiquitous and far reaching, so far wreaking havoc as far away as a small town in northern Norway. Many foreign banks and fund managers invested in CDOs and the like, and the real damage will prove to be more vast and far reaching than anyone has told you. Many more banks will fail and some countries will as well!

My advice to foreign visitors: Quit buying stuff you don’t need. Get back in your flying saucers, or whatever you flew here in and go home, save your Euros, (you’re going to need them soon) buy gold and quit taking so much malevolent glee in America’s pain. After all you won’t want us point and laughing as you loose an arm and a leg. It is wise to remember we are all in this together and for reasons too numerous to name things are going to get much, much worse, for all of us.
Vern
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