The $8,000 Gift Horse

Yes, it's a gift. From the government. To first time homebuyers, those who have not owned a home for the past three years.

And people are looking the $8,000 Gift Horse in the mouth.

Meaning, of course, they aren't actively seeking to buy a home prior to midnight, November 30th, 2009, when the offer expires. Goes away. Kaput. $8 thousand dollars gone.

To understand the reluctance of people to step forward and take advantage of this offer, you must look at the bigger picture of what's happening in our economy.

First, there is no consumer confidence in the direction the country is heading. The evening news, which, unfortunately, provides the information we use to make our decisions now that we've given up reading altogether, offers a constant barrage of negative news regarding the national debt, rising costs of goods and services (inflation), wars, plagues, businesses going out of business, unemployment, rising racial tensions, and so on until the average person on the street begins to understand that the whole thing is out of control. Would you have confidence in buying a home at any price with any incentives if you were confident that the only thing you could anticipate happening was you losing your job because the government was getting ready to tax your employer out of business? The answer is NO, you wouldn't have confidence. Unless, of course, you took a lesson from those who came before you and re-examined your role in the world as an American.

What I mean is this. When the Pilgrims arrived on our shores, they were starving, the wilderness was steadily and rapidly killing them until they began to adapt using Native American methods of survival. Did the Pilgrims become Indians? No, they remained Pilgrims and adapted.

During all of our countries trials and tribulations, Civil War, WWI and II, Vietnam, Pearl Harbor, The Great Depression, 9/11, etc. the people of the country have come together in the end to preserve a way of life. Today the challenge is remembering what and who we are as a nation.

In short, if you think we're about to become a failed nation, where millions are unemployed with no hope of employment, where starving throngs will fight over resources, food, heat, water, where gangs will roam the countryside killing and looting, then I pose this question: Why would you hesitate one moment to buy a house? It would be the least of your worries if you couldn't pay for it, right? At that point, would you really worry about your credit score? I doubt your banker would even call you about a late payment, am I right?

I think we should begin to act like the Americans who worked their way through all these previous trials, like there IS a tomorrow and move forward. It's what we do better than any nation on earth. Don't give the nation up to the weak and uninspired, take it back and rebuild it starting today. Open a business, buy a home, save money, live within your means, manage the life you've been given, don't hand it over to some bureaucrat to manage. Take it back. Now.