Weekly GungHo Real Estate E-Zine – January 13, 2010

Featured Article

Play the Learning Game, Not the Blame Game

On Christmas day, Dec. 25, we learned that that a man aboard an airplane bound for Detroit had tried to blow up the plane and had to be subdued by fellow passengers and crew.

Shortly after, we learned that this man’s father had warned officials of his son’s extremism but the warnings didn’t keep him from getting on the plane.

And after that, we learned President Barack Obama said that "shortcomings" led to the attack, and learned that the White House ordered beefed-up security measures and increased intelligence-sharing between government agencies.

Let’s hope the learning doesn’t stop with the facts that have come to light. Let’s hope the learning comes FROM the facts that have come to light.

It’s easy to play the blame game after an event like that. Not as easy, but far more important, is what we learn from the event, so that we can avoid the same mistake. Sometimes, people get so caught up in the blame that they completely miss the lesson.

We have to be careful that doesn’t happen with the global economic condition we live in right now. At least here in the United States, it appears we are finally learning lessons rather than pointing fingers.

Sure, it was easy at first to blame greedy banks or unscrupulous fund managers for the near-collapse of the finance industry. But the saying goes that what gets you into the bubble never gets you back out of it, and quite a few banks, and quite a few fund managers dealing in mortgage-backed securities, aren’t even around anymore to try to get out of it.

Unfortunately for some, the fallout of the actions of greedy bankers and shady mortgage brokers has stuck around even as they have disappeared from the landscape. The houses that were financed with payments that became unaffordable, that became impossible to refinance because of falling values — those houses are still around. And to blame them for the crash would be like blaming the car in an automobile accident.

An interesting article at Newsweek.com cited a report that Americans withdrew $682 billion worth of equity from homes in 2006 and another $473 billion in 2007. By the second quarter of 2008, however, that equity was instead turned negative, drawing money from properties instead of the other way around.

The result, the article says, is that it has changed the way Americans purchase, borrow and invest. Spending is down, yes, but it also may be getting smarter. If there’s more saving, more spending from money earned rather than money borrowed, it would appear that a lesson has been learned.

It’s up to you, as an individual, whether you will be part of the learning game as 2010 unfolds, or whether you will continue to instead play the blame game.

The blame game won’t help you undo what has already happened. The learning game will.