Well, it's back to work after a little hiatus. The Upper Valley market activity has surprised everybody with its level of activity and price points all summer and, although as is usual for this time of year, the level of activity has dropped off some, there are plenty of properties being bought and sold. Time on the market is up, selling prices are down, and financing is harder to get.

We knew all of that, but the interesting part is that, certainly compared to much of the country, the Upper Valley is hardly feeling any ill effects from the FNMA implosion, and the "housing crisis". As we run up to what promises to be another in a series of contentious and close elections, it's becoming clear to me that what I have suspected all along is actually looking more like fact. That fact is.....

The American people have been duped again. The current administration's policies or lack thereof, have led us into a set of problems that began with 9/11, but could have been prevented. Al Quaeda or Bin Laden, or whoever really planned and executed that evil act have succeeded beyond their wildest expectations. Not by and through the act of terror itself, but through the stupidity and greed of our country's leaders in their reaction to the event.

The 9/11 event killed over 3000 innocents. The reaction has killed untold thousands of people, cost unimaginable amounts of this country's treasure and resulted in the unprecedented run-up in oil prices that is the progenitor of most of the economic problems facing this country and the world. It has been exacerbated by a cynical exploitation of much of the working class by convincing them that they could have a piece of the "American Dream" and luring them, with the complicity of the Federal Reserve, into home mortgages that could never be repaid, which has led us to where we are today.

Wild generalizations? Conspiracy theory run amok? Bush-hating rhetoric? Maybe - but there's more.