I’ve been flooded with emails from people wanting to know are we headed for another Great Depression. Now just to set the record straight, neither the Secretary of the Treasury, nor Warren Buffet are calling me asking me for my input…but I don’t mind providing my understanding of where we currently fit into history.

Panic doesn’t cause depression; bad policy does. Foolish decisions regarding increased taxes, trade tariffs, and monetary policy are what caused the Great Depression. A great read on the subject is a book called The Forgotten Man – A new history of the Great Depression by Amity Shlaes. You’ll see how the 1929 stock market crash did not cause the Depression.

Another great example of how different a time this is to 1929 is that during the Great Depression countries, especially America, were isolationist by nature and tried to enact a win-lose economic policy. Just last week the Fed, European/British and Canadian Central Banks all lowered rates in unison and even though this cut won’t do much to bring up the credit market, it is a radical contrast to what took place during the Depression.

We are obviously in a recession and will be for a time but, as we are already seeing out West, there’s plenty of demand for discounted homes. Many short sales and foreclosures are in multiple bid situations. There’s money to be made in times like this but it requires us to take the emotions of our fears and apprehension and pour it into the diligence of our daily activities to generate leads.

I don’t know about you, but I am keeping my eye on the situation and then putting my head down and getting back to work.

Hope this helps.

It’s a good life!

Brian