9/11 and Real Estate
I found an interesting article in yesterday’s Salt Lake Tribune about schools treating 9/11 memorials with little fanfare, if at all.
As a business person, I try to keep politics separate from business because I don’t want to offend anyone. However, on this anniversary of the attacks, I think it would be tragic for Americans to forget what happened that autumn morning.
East Layton Elementary School is one Utah school that doesn’t do anything to remember 9/11 -
She said her school teaches respect for the U.S., but does not commemorate Sept. 11.
“We don’t want our kids thinking about that. We want them to move on,” Johnston said. “It might be age appropriate for older students to acknowledge and talk about it, but for our younger kids, we don’t want them to dwell on violence.”
That may be an appropriate response for an event that has been completed, where justice has been served and forgiveness granted. 9/11 was just the beginning of a turmoil America is still deeply involved in. I remember with great sadness the innocent people who were killed on September 11th and it pains me how this country seems to ignore the dozens of soldiers killed each week in Iraq and Afghanistan. Those casualty numbers are so small or so frequent, they seem to have just become the background noise of our daily lives. Should we let our children forget so soon? Should we forget so soon?
Besides political turmoil, 9/11 brought economic turmoil we’re still feeling every day. Do you remember what gas prices were in 2001? They hovered a little over a dollar. They’re at close to three dollars today. The American consumer has been resilient to little things like this, still driving the economy by spending as much as they can.
9/11 was at the forefront of the housing boom. After the attacks, Americans wanted to stay home. The dot.com bubble had just popped, airlines were hurting, the stock market was in a nose dive and America sought comfort in their homes to feel better about themselves. It helped the Fed lowered interest rates to a level that just about everyone could own a home. The next economic boom began on 9/11 and is just winding down now.
Even Alan Greenspan admitted last week that real estate was another bubble phenomenon and interest rate adjustments can’t stop it from happening.
“The human race has never found a way to confront bubbles,” Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said Thursday in reference to the euphoria that can precede contractions, or reactions, like the current market turmoil, according to a published report.
Bubbles can’t be defused through incremental adjustments in interest rates, he suggested…
The pain of 9/11 is still being felt on the battlefield, the halls of Congress, by the families torn apart by war and in America’s pocket book. We are no closer to finding Osama bin Laden now than we were six years ago. The war in Iraq has turned into a drain. The desire for real estate now feels like a nasty hangover.
Let’s not forget 9/11. Let’s teach our children the lessons of that attack…all of them. Ignoring the consequences of 9/11 is the worst thing we can do if we don’t want it to happen again.