Andy and Jon, Children of The Bubble

Meet Andy.

Andy is 28, used to work in advertising, and now works on a political campaign. He's an Activist.

Meet Jon.

Jon is 34, used to work on Wall Street until recently. He's a Lawyer.

Neither have any memory of a world in which residential property values did not rise at a pace well past any other investment. It's as if one has a right to buy a house for Price A(say 75K) refi it a few times, touch it up a bit, and sell it for a multiple of A(say 295K). Anyone or anything who gets in the way of that would be just so, well, unprogressive, don't you think?

So, how do Andy and Jon's paths cross? They both moved to Louisville, and each bought one of those charming little frame shotgun houses in Butchertown, in the district traditionally associated with the stockyards and slaughterhouses.

Now, Andy and Jon and their fellow Butchertown Children of the Bubble have problem on their hands. There is still a meat-packing plant in Butchertown!! OMG!!! It's been there since 1969, and it..it..it SMELLS LIKE A PACKING PLANT!!

It employs 1400 people, but, you know, they're those kind of people, who don't have college educations, but are likely to have pot bellies and speak English with funny accents and drink beer and raise children. A lot of them go to church! Some of them smoke! OMG, they must go! They will just ruin our property values!

So, Andy the Activist, chair of the local homeowners association, and Jon the Lawyer get together to file complaints with the zoning commission, and lawsuits against the zoning commission, and generally stomp their feet to demand, DEMAND I SAY, that this nuisance be removed from their presence forthwith!

Now, it will cost the firm some $350 million to build a new plant, but that's a small price to pay in order to make Butchertown a 'Walkable Neighborhood', near the proposed botanical gardens, with each of those little shotgun frame houses selling for $500k. After all, we're Young Professionals, the sort of people a city wants, unlike those smelly worker types, with their smelly children.

So, the packing plant is spending hundreds of thousands dealing with the neighbors, the city, the lawsuits, etc., while employing 1400 people who actually produce something. Every day, live pigs go in one door, and bacon and ham depart the other. People buy and eat bacon and ham. People can't buy and eat inflated real estate valuations, generally.

Time was, those little shotgun houses actually housed families with children. Their dads worked in the plants. They worked to support their families, eventually own their little house bought with the help of the local S&L, and hopefully launch their kids and grandkids to a better life than theirs. That was the deal. That was The American Dream.

The Bubble killed much of that off. The workers commute from the south side, not from 'Walkable Neighborhoods', where they try to raise their kids. The Young Professionals remodel their houses in their Walkable Neighborhoods, oddly empty of children and young mothers, and harrass anyone who dares cross their path.

Even if that anyone happened to have been there first, for some decades.

Until we address the raw narcissism of the culture, the Fed and government can hose the economy down with cash, stimulus programs, tax credits, jobs programs, health reforms, bailouts, what have you.

It won't matter.

I'm to the point of thinking that the sooner the air is let out of the real-estate bubble, and values return to the mean, the better. Then and only then will sanity begin to have a fighting chance.

Andy and Jon will just have to adjust, and perhaps produce something with their lives beside litigation.

OMG!!!