Well, let's see what today's news has brought us.

The U.S. dollar is at another record low against the Euro and most other major currencies, the SIXTH CONSECUTIVE TRADING DAY where the dollar tests another bottom.

U.S. new home sales are at a SEVEN YEAR LOW. Prices of new homes will fall for the first time year-over-year on a national basis since the Great Depression.

World oil prices reached a new intraday trading high of $84 a barrel.

I'm glad the President had time to order the FAA to impose new rules so air travelers don't experience excessive flight delays. While Rome burns, Nero plays the jukebox.

The Fed has pegged interest rates too low and every world market is telling, no screaming, this to Washington but the Fed has its hearing aid turned off and is contemplating further rate cuts. Let's forget about inflation which is real, growing as a threat, and now with oil pushing $100 a barrel a disaster in the making.

At the same time U.S. capital markets are whining like spoiled brats with a curfew about the lack of liquidity, the weak U.S. dollar is pulling cash out of these very same markets. Investors aren't stupid. Why buy the dollar when interest rates are higher elsewhere?

And you expect residential real estate to prosper in this environment?

The same brilliant strategists who are giving us victory in the war in Iraq are now applying their same reasoning to the U.S. economy---with the same predictable results.

Foreign investors are buying U.S. assets with currency reserves sold to them by U.S. consumers through a record trade deficit. Plus they get to buy these U.S. equities, real estate, businesses, stocks, and even the exchanges the stocks themselves sell on all with strong foreign currencies converted into the weakest U.S. dollars on record.

Sounds like a winning plan to me.  I mean for them, not us.

The U.S. economy will be in recession by early 2009. The U.S. commercial real estate market so far spared the damage of its smaller residential cousin will wobble and fall around the time our new President is sworn in---if not sooner. With all the emphasis on the subprime mortgage mess few people pay attention to the excesses, greed, and just plain dumb underwriting practices that have been occurring in this market. These guys make the subprime sector look like models of chastity and virtue.

As a real estate investor, don't expect any financial relief in prices or sales through at least 2010. And I'm being optimistic here.

Robert J. Abalos, Esq.

www.robertjabalos.com