Euro-Trash/Carrion Feeder Hybrids Created Using The DNA of Short Sighted Americans

The ongoing economic meltdown (caused by the uniquely American combination of self absorbed consumption and delusional self destruction, otherwise known as the "housing boom") has become so convoluted and terrifying that it's starting to feel like science fiction. However, as the LA Times' indispensible LA Land blog makes clear, to make the most sense out of things, we should be boning up on Jonathan Swift, not Heinlein.

That's because even as California's housing economy sinks deeper into the sinkhole, unlikely saviors are stepping in to exploit the hell out of salvage what can be salvaged from the wreck. Ladies and Gentlemen, I bring you the Orwellianly monikered California Distressed Land Fund Ltd.:

Damn it, aren't there any actual jobs left in America? First manufacturing jobs went to China, then customer service jobs went to southeast Asia. Now even our heartless, greedy speculating jobs are going to the Europeans? Horrors! I know, I know - just as those of us who suggested that it might be a bad thing to let the unregulated actions of a very tiny number of people to create the demonstrably false appearance of demand (thus driving up real estate prices to levels so high it required new kinds of math) were told to eat a bowl of dicks*, I'm sure we'll now be told that all the (once obscenely expensive) land being bought at cut rate prices by extranational speculators is just fine and dandy, and won't have any kind of bad effect on the economy. And that a spoonful of suck-on-this-one-commie goes down great with a bowlful of dicks.

Then again, perhaps I'm being bitter. It's not like it's the end of the world, right?

Michelson went on to add that "Lo! An Angel blew the first trumpet and I saw real estate prices the world over collapse, as the moon turned red as blood, and the sky turned black as sackcloth!"

But I digress.

Well, more power to them, I suppose. Still, as Atrios pointed out, the appeal of buying real estate in horrible places like the Inland Empire wasn't based on how wonderful and awesome it is to live there**. Sorry, but it's true. It was based largely on the (let's face it) mythical belief that the real estate speculator craze was never going to end, and property values were just going to keep going up and up and up. In that scenario, the issue isn't whether or not people truly want to live in a particular place (or if living there even makes sense, economically,) it's whether or not people want to own property there just long enough to turn a profit.

I'm fully aware that such places had a small number of true locals who liked living there***, but these days the locals are more than outnumbered by a combination of speculators, just slightly too late to ruin their own city's economy, forced to look elsewhere, and middle-to-working class people forced by said speculators to rent or buy in further and further out in the sticks. As we know, even the worst crack house in LA now requires a yearly income of at least 15 million dollars. And that's just to get a call back.

In either case, there just aren't hundreds of thousands of people who, for the most part, would choose, all things being equal, to live in a hot, economically poor backwater, so far away as to dictate a daily commute several hours long. Nobody starts their decision making process with "I want my monthly gasoline expenses outstrip my insurance bill." It seems to me that as energy prices continue to rise, and the economy continues lock itself in its bedroom, sobbing quietly and listening to way too much Elliott Smith, the benefits of living in such places dwindle to the point that even these vulture-esque speculators are going to find it difficult to turn a profit.

And this doesn't begin to deal with the non speculators turned out of their houses as the economy tanks. So it has that in common with LA's city government****.

Of course, there is a solution - maybe these far flung bed room communities could be redesigned so that they're not just cheap, they're also livable. Perhaps these investors might consider more walk-friendly environs, developed so that one isn't enslaved to the cars that increasingly feel more like albatross necklaces than modern conveniences. Perhaps investment in the American economy beyond sending every job possible overseas, so that people could work near where they live and have a reasonable expectation of supporting themselves, might help.

Given our behavior over the last decade, that's not bloody likely. I expect the IE to start the process of reverse gentrification in 5... 4... 3... 2... 1.

I could be wrong however. Thoughts?

* This expression is due to replace "douchebag" as the most overused (but incredibly useful) put-down, sometime in late 2008.

** No, not horrible because of the people. Some of my favorite people reside in the IE. It's just that it's hot, really hot, incredibly hot, impossible to go anywhere without taking a car, even if you're talking across the street, and did I mention hot enough to give skin cancer to a frying egg, chock full of depressingly wasted land, seemingly designed to speed up the wasting of the world's remaining gasoline, and in case I wasn't clear, really, unbearably hot, even in december.

*** Why? I don't know, because like I said, the IE is unbearably hot. Maybe they like heatstroke

**** Zing!