"It's the End of the World As We Know It..."

Financial institutions continue to fail. Banks are being merged, investors are still losing
trillions. Today, the Dow Jones index lost 777 points (a lucky omen?). And the House of
Representatives refused to give a rubber stamp to the $700 billion bail out.

These are very interesting times. It appears this is a global phenomenon, with
banks and other institutions feeling the ripples from the Wall Street debacle
in Iceland, the Netherlands, and Great Britain.

Luckily, real estate is a fairly stable investment, even if
mortgages collateralized as securities are one of the causes of the current crisis.
But people can't sell their co-ops in a few minutes by calling their brokers
to SELL!-- as owners panic that they'll be left with a worthless investments.

A home may be an investment, and in most cases it has been a very good
investment for people in the long run. But a home should primarily be a home, a place to
live. It isn't primarily an investment traded back and forth and purchased
just for speculation. A stock in a corporation that fails will leave an investor with--
a worthless certificate, suitable for framing. An apartment that loses value remains the
same apartment-- until and unless it is sold.

It is never a good idea to sell in a panic, because market frenzy distorts the
market. The price of apartments will likely decline, primarily because
people will lose their jobs and no longer be able to afford to live
in expensive apartments in NYC. And some will sell because they figure
they'll get a better price now than in a year or so, when "the end of the world"
will depress prices even more.

But people are still drawn to NYC. It is a very exciting place to live. It
is international, it is fun, it has much to offer. And not everyone works
on Wall Street-- New York has a very diverse economy-- as the advertising, fashion,
publishing, art and cultural capital of the US, if not the world.

R.E.M.'s song rings in my mind as I watch the talking heads on TV, predicting
another "Great Depression" and collapse of the US economy. The lyrics,
as well as I remember them, consisted of Michael Stipe intoning that "It's the
end of the world as we know it--- and I feel fine!"

While banks have folded and investments have lost value, I watch the leaves
turning bright colors and Canadian geese flying south. No one has told the
pigeons in the Park that the world is ending, and the babies laughing
don't seem to know it either. The moon is still bright, no matter what happened
on Wall Street today. So I think we need to be calm, and appreciate the sky-- because
despite all the panic-- Chicken Little was wrong-- the sky isn't falling.

-end-