At the time of this writing, Fannie and Freddie have been taken over by the Feds, AIG is in deep trouble, one of the oldest investment firms in the country, Lehman Brothers, has declared bankruptcy and is being sold off to Barclays PLC, and Bush is pushing a ?bail out? bill that would cost taxpayers approximately $700B. I think I?ll go out on a limb here and declare that we have hit the bottom. Yes, things seem very bad right now. BUT I would like to share a story with you about a conversation I had with a friend of mine as we hiked up a local mountain trail recently. My friend, who is in his early thirties, is from Iran and has lived in this country since the early 90?s. He works a job that has nothing to do with the mortgage industry, but he is certainly aware of our country?s current predicament. We were about half way up the mountain and the topic of the economy naturally came up. As I was bemoaning the unprecedented low of our economy, he immediately starts talking about his memories of living in Iran. He talked about ?well-to-do? families who were financially stripped overnight of their life savings based on a government whim. He also talked about school mates and neighborhood friends who would one day be sitting beside him at school or outside playing in the streets and the next day they were dead from a mortar shell or killed in some facet of war. After describing these horrific events ? and as I was soaking up the insanity of it all - he looked at me with unwavering confidence, his eyes swollen with pride and says ?Bob, I have lived in countries all over the world, and I promise you, no matter how difficult people may think they have it here, the United States is still the greatest country in the world?. He said it with such conviction that I had no doubt he was right and it put many things into perspective. With the bottom hopefully realized, there is only one direction to go. There is still a huge need for mortgage lenders and brokers as first time homebuyers and financially stable consumers take advantage of dropping home values. Get out there and create those real estate agent relationships, find and fight for those deals and put effort into your business. I also think that this $700B bail out will be good for our industry and the economy; it will hopefully give some life to our secondary market. In my opinion there is still no better business to be in. Keep up the fight Robert Pegg
