I work in an industry -- the housing industry -- with direct exposure to the forces behind the current economic situation.
And I see a brilliant opportunity for those prescient enough to seize it.
Yesterday, both Bill Clinton and Ron Paul pointed to real estate as the fulcrum in the strange financial imbalance of the past several years. In his CNN.com opinion piece, Paul argues that until prices begin to reflect a more close relationship to value, artificially lowered interest rates will only exacerbate credit destabilization; meanwhile, in his Daily Show appearance, Clinton outlined how real estate and construction became the preferred profit vehicle in a market flush with a Clinton-era surplus (oddly enough, he essentially argued that the success of his own economic policies is partly to blame for the mortgage crisis). There was capital to invest, and profit could only be maximized if the market was expanded, leading to the creative and risky mortgage market we have come to be so intimately disgusted with.