(Community Matters) Extraordinary times these are. Whenever we are headed into an economic slowdown, I’m reminded what a few of my old banking clients use to tell me, “you make your money when you buy, not when you sell.” George Sandlin and Johnny Gannt especially come to mind. They’d build up liquidity and buy when the market turned south, or appeared dangerous and they could buy at the right price. So, I’ve always thought when we had some liquidity, that’s what we’d do. Well, we blinked.
We’ve had our eyes on three investment properties for sometime. Even negotiated over one of these earlier this year but the seller wouldn’t blink and we had a ceiling. This week, that seller called and was ready to negotiate. We kicked into gear – our favorite former MBA student/realtor, Jason Heffron such a good sport, revived the financial projections and updated rates and rents. Not 100% sure the seller would accept our price, but he called knowing unambiguously what it was worth to us 8 months ago.
Nevertheless, we can’t pull the trigger. I don’t believe anyone knows what exposure exists in our financial system. Warren Buffett’s time bomb, aka weapons of mass destruction, are still out there. A $1 trillion fix doesn’t completely impress me against a potential $65 trillion exposure (estimated value of outstanding derivatives). My totally out-of-the-ass intuition is that the probability is good we’ll be fixed. But, who the hell knows? Steven sleeps like a baby when we have liquidity. He works too hard and frets too much when we don’t. What the hell good will additional retirement assets do me if he’s not around to share my life?
I take solace in Zogby’s forecast that Americans are entering an era when we’ll curb material needs, value diversity, practice retrospection and demand authenticity. Probably a good thing the former, because we’ll either be paying for our twenty-eight year binge or suffering decreased standards of living at least in the near future.
Community Matters 