PrintSeptember 3, 2013
Return to Economic Sanity
I went down to the Jersey Shore last weekend, and I got to talk to a small businessman trying to make it in the Obama economy. You big dogs sitting in your bunkers along the commanding heights might like to lend an ear. We might all learn something from "Bob".
Bob runs a small franchise selling blinds and window coverings to homeowners in Pennsylvania about half way between New York and Philadelphia. He says that his customers are deeply affected by high gas prices. And he concurs with PJ Media's John Ransom that a big factor in the 2008 meltdown was high oil prices. When gas prices are up, Bob's commuter customers, who live where homes are cheapest, can't afford to buy blinds and fix up their homes.
Bob shakes his head at the last frothy years of the real-estate bubble. Young guys would tell him how home prices would go up forever, he reminisced. We agreed on the folly of 100 percent loans after years of price increases, and the madness of strict regulation of credit after prices...(Read Full Article)
