I love conspiracies.
And not for the reason that I’m paranoid and think everyone is out to get me, or that the major multinational corporations/national governments are watching my every move, but because I like the way they sort of make things fit. In some instances they provide speculators the ability to come up with their own thoughts on what actually is happening – or reasons behind certain events.
And just quickly going over most of my favorite conspiracies in my head, it all comes down to one thing: Money. Everyone has a price, and anything can be bought. Money can make people do things they wouldn’t ever think of doing normally.
Recently, I’ve seen a couple of things go down that definitely caught my attention. Obviously, one was much more harmful than the other, but I think both have a bit of a conspiracy to them (read: There’s a lot of money on the line).
First and worst off is the recent
Then, on the way to work, listening to NPR I heard there was a possibility that 3 of the major fires may have been attributed to arson. That was all I needed for my conspiracy to come together. Honestly, I’m sure someone else has already come up with this…and if they have I would love to read it because more than likely they are better writers than I am.
Here’s how the
-
-Along with the rapid growth of home prices has come the ridiculous amount of lending that has been done – especially using sub prime vehicles to finance these million dollar houses.
-With luxury home prices come all of the builders looking to cash in on the next
-Finally someone woke up and said they weren’t going to pay $3.4 million for a 1300 square foot townhouse off of the PCH. And all of those speculators who held on for a bit too long started to get burned and wanted to get out making something. The selling pressure from everyone to cash out of their homes before the guy down the street did drove down prices. Suddenly there was way too much inventory on the market and no one could move their property because all the buyers had bought already, and those that sold had already left. Those that got in late, or way over their heads can’t move their property so they face foreclosure…bankruptcy – a complete mess. There are even some properties previous to the fire that were being auctioned off at a 50% discount!
I love
http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/13782125/detail.html
It’s even happening just blocks from me. I’ve recently seen a builder buy an acre lot, knock down the house, cut down all the trees, and with a dirt lot, just walk off realizing they probably wouldn’t be able to sell the houses they build on the lot for the price they need to breakeven.
The dirt lot is now for sale.
So what does money do? Money will claw and scratch and bite to save itself. Anything to prevent losing massive amounts of it. And who would be perfect to provide us with a bail out in a situation like this?
Insurance companies.
For at least the past 3 years, companies like State Farm and Progressive have posted record amounts of profit in the
Someone must have recognized this. In my opinion it had to be someone with a lot of money on the line. I’m thinking one of the homebuilders. When you put up billions of dollars to develop land, and you’re holding those properties for more than a year? That’s a lot of carrying costs…and a lot of lost money. How hard would it be to pay a group of people a small portion of what you’re losing every month and burn down your properties? You’ve got them fully insured until they sell right? And the deductible is nothing compared to the carrying cost you face if you continue to hold these properties…
And the insurance companies have been gouging everyone anyway right? It’s about time they got back some of that money they’ve been paying…for seemingly nothing…Suddenly that homebuilder which is carrying multiple properties on one of their unsold lots, hemorrhaging millions of dollars a month, now only owes 20-40% of their deductible on the homes if they want to replace them. Doesn’t that sound better than giving up a home for a 50% loss to a seller?
It’s just unfortunate that this might have gotten out of control…I’m not sure if it was planned to light these fires along with the Santa Ana winds…but the whole thing is kind of sickening when I start to think about it like this. All the innocent homeowners who have lost everything. All of the firefighters battling the flames 4 days straight without sleep and little to eat.
As a side note, I have heard of insurance companies either completely dropping clients now or upping rates in
Now on to a little bit lighter conspiracy – but still an interesting one for me.
In the South Eastern corner of our nation they’re currently experiencing a massive drought.
I know, that’s a link to a google search…but there’s enough articles there to fill a day of reading…
So while one side of the country burns…the other yearns for water. Sounds pretty similar. It seems kind of silly to me with more than half of the Earth’s surface covered in water that we would ever face something like this. And yes, I understand that most of it is salt water, but there is some pretty amazing stuff coming out of desalination: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desalination
So what does the local government do? Just like any other area would do: It tells it’s constituents to conserve…or else.
Fines for watering the lawn can be up to $1,000 in certain areas: http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/1886924/
So where’s the conspiracy here you might be asking? First off – there should almost never be any shortage of water supply anywhere in the
Here’s what a drought does though: It creates revenue. Suddenly city water workers can drive around the city citing residents for watering their lawns or just using too much water. Fines for using your water? Sounds like free money for your government! That’s better than tax since the people expect something from the tax money that they pay!
Secondly, since I’m assuming at least 80% of the population of that area will do their best to conserve in this so called drought – they’re going to change habits. A 30 minute warm bath will now become a 3 minute shower. Lawn watering will no longer be done and there won’t be a lawn to take care of any longer. Toilets won’t be flushed as often. Dish washing will be done on a full load and the same will go for laundry.
But what happens to the water and sewer company? All this conservation and suddenly their revenues – the money that they earn per gallon of water that their clients use is cut possibly in half! Now they are the ones losing money.
Well here’s a solution for them – just like they did to us here in
One of my favorite sayings has always been “they get you coming and going”. The whole cause and effect of drought = conservation will always be interesting to me as I see it play out throughout the country. Kind of sad how hard people will try to make a buck…or prevent themselves from losing one.
My best goes out to everyone struggling with what I’ve mentioned here. I’m sure the road will be long and hard, but my hope is that each day it’ll be getting better.
No comments:
Post a Comment