I read a story yesterday on modern “ghost towns” being created by developers who begin big-bucks housing developments, but lack money or investors to finish them. And the buyers they found for the first few models now fear for the long-term worth of their $500,000 homes, for what if the lots around them stay empty enough that someone can erect a mere $250,000 home right next door?

Gee, cry me a river. Mind you, I really don’t know enough about economics to comment with any expertise on what has made the housing bubbles go “poof”, but I wonder what is in everyone’s pipes. I don’t think you need a degree in economics to see that things have been going to hell in a hand-basket; I’m just a never-got-that-degree-finished housewife who thinks too much and I can see it. You see, for the last ten years I have been watching prices on houses and everything else in real estate ’round here go up and up and up. To the point that many families working for companies with other branches, say in the Midwest, have moved to the Plains. They say they can afford life there. And they can’t afford life here.

But it isn’t only housing that I am looking at when empty windows catch my attention. It is business parks. Everywhere you look in the last five years, another business park goes up. Some are humongous warehouse affairs, others are collections of buildings quite artfully done to be stores and salons and restaurants and much better than the old-style “strip mall”, too. And they will have only one or two businesses filled out of a dozen. An entire complex being built in the fashion of the modern multi-roofed mall is going up not far from me. Less than two miles down the road, one of these lesser shopping pods sits empty except for a single paint store. And the big mall, which will be anchored to a Target store and a theater and gym, well, you know I expect empty windows there, too.

The rents will be too high. And people aren’t shopping much. If it isn’t a discount house of some sort, the parking lots just don’t fill; too few dollars and too many non-discretionary items to buy. The new Target in that brand new mall complex promises to open in October—too late for the school shopping season, but just in time for Christmas. But also just in time for winter’s cold and the heating oil market, which promises to be very costly indeed. There won’t be a lot of money to spend to keep any non-chain new businesses alive in that “Sunrise Park” mall.
Maybe there is a reason that GMC, embattled here by costs of gas to fuel those ridiculously huge SUVs, opened a big show of their newest vehicles in China and not here at home? Not only will jobs go overseas, but now, American vehicles will go compete abroad in new Chinese markets. Can you see a Chinese bumper sticker in a few years, reading “Buy Chinese!” But for now, the Chinese are salivating over things like the recreated Buick “Invicta”….a car not produced here since 1963. Is GMC doing the Invicta again to raise corporate spirits (and gee, like the Olympic Games, in China) or is it an admission to that new market—that China is indeed “invincible”? So, GMC goes, hat in hand, looking for a place to sell image over sensible substance because they have spent too long producing ego-fluffing monstrosities instead of prudent transportation.

I don’t see good things ahead. And empty lots for “estate” housing is just the tip of the iceberg. Somehow, even with the Cold War over, America has been put back in the position of having no business that “works” except war on other nations.  And that isn’t working so well, either.  Sure, the top crew is getting rich and undertakers must be doing well, but in spite of dumping photographers who take true pictures and banning portraits of caskets, parts of America just get restive over young American corpses, seen or not.  You can’t prop up an economy on invasion forever. And war is too expensive a game, you can’t sell stock in bloodshed as easily as you can sell cheap t-shirts.

We have acted recklessly under the tutelage of liars and thieves: the economy is shaking on the edifice of debt from war, all the old remedies are failing and the world can’t see us as a leader when we can’t save ourselves. Americans may now learn the meaning of the old song phrases about wanting bread…and roses, too. For too long, we took the “roses” for granted and now can barely afford bread. If we can’t regain our footing and prioritize better, we will have much more than ghost “towns” to contend with in the years ahead.  The ghosts of our Founding Fathers must look at us and shake their heads; they tried to tell us about the brutal effects of wealth and over-weaning pride on a democracy and they warned about getting involved in foreign wars.  Now, Bush sends a fleet to sit off the coast of Iran and rattles sabres at Russia.  He can’t get enough of his dying “war Presidency” bit; I’ve had enough, haven’t you?

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