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Strategies & Market Trends : The Epic American Credit and Bond Bubble Laboratory -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Gemlaoshi who wrote (14567)	5/27/2004 8:38:45 AM
From: russwinter	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 110194

<If GDP continues to grow at >5%> I'm wondering how much of this is baked in regardless of GDP growth. There have been several million new, oversized houses built in the last several years, much if it sprawled out in less than energy efficient development patterns. There is also million and millions of square feet of big new high ceiling retail. I drove by a city on my the Yosemite part of a vacation in No. Calf. a month ago called Tracy. It epitomizes every thing that's wrong with the US bubble economy, and looks absolutely unsustainable. You are driving along a freeway coming out of the eastern outskirts of the Silicon Valley. You go through Livermore, which at least makes some sense as it appears to be a large corporate center. Then you drive through kind of a dry country about twenty miles, and there it is. The first clue was crawling traffic (lots of SUVies and the gasoline burning shit) at about 30 mph at 3:15 in the afternoon. After about five miles of this, you come to the most God awful sight. Stretched on the left side of the freeway are about two miles of big box retailers, restaurants, car lots, sort of 1998 style tech bubble retail development, with 2003 echo bubble expansion tacked on. Just about everybody is there, and clearly represents "new store openings" of the last couple years for all the players. On the right, are miles of ugly crackerbox, ticky tacky housing, with no trees or cover, just sort of baking in the sun. This represents so called cheaper housing for SUVies driving commuters going 20-50 miles west into the Silicon Valley. I noticed gops of "financing this and that" signage everywhere, so I'm certain bubble finance is big part of the story here. I saw no definable downtown area, but I resisted the temptation to get off the freeway and explore this sterile Leviathan more. The town appeared to have way too many "left turn lanes" that one could easily get stuck in for hours. What a relief to get past that POS. I suppose Tracy is where SBUX's gets the "11% same store sales" growth, as it's obviously getting bigger by the day. Wish I had a good way of tracking this city, great canary in the coal shaft for the Bubble economy. Could die about any time IMHO.