He's baaaaack...

For breakfast he devoured Nasdaq and a few companies like Enron and WorldCom. He burped up the likes of Martha Stewart, who has so far managed to escape with only a few bear scratches. Bernie Ebbers and Scott Sullivan were digested late and Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling are probably giving him a late case of severe indigestion.

It's late 2005 and the bell's about to ring for lunch. Lunch is going to be a whole lot different from breakfast. The bearinator's been hibernating since March 2003 and he is RAVENOUS. He's looking at that the new stock bubble as an appetizer. But the stock bubble is just fluff and hot air, financial paper games. It won't satisfy the bearinator's appetite. There are more Enrons and WorldComs out there, but the bearinator wants SUBSTANCE. He is eager to gobble down a meal not tasted since the early 90's, that big juicy-looking real estate bubble, hot off the grill, dripping with excess froth. That will be his main course. The mere thought of ripping with teeth and claws into all that bubbly construction, those new big bubble homes filled with that chewy new fancy furniture and those crunchy big screen TVs and fancy outdoor grills and whatever other bubble toys the Bubbleonians blew their credit on - now that's a bear's meal! And it's going to be easy pickings too. Because some 70% of households own their homes, few will escape the clutch of the bearinator's claws. Even the lucky few owning their homes free and clear won't escape unscathed - if the surrounding neighborhood is infected by the bubble then there goes the neighborhood. Rental properties won't be immune either - families can double up if necessary, just like they did in the 30's (and that's assuming they can pay rent).

Dinner will be relatively light. By then the major financial institutions will be in a state of paralysis, due to a merger frenzy to stay alive, and due to an outsourcing frenzy in a frantic attempt cut costs. (Let's not get into massive loan defaults.)  Maybe it won't matter that the banks are paralyzed, since most people won't have any savings in their banks anyway. Bubbleonians will discover that their bubbleminiums are not ATM cash machines and that all the money they got out of their houses must be PAID BACK. Refinancing ain't gonna do it. Wearing their Jimmy Choos and their Guccis, the Bubbleonians will slink into their mortgage-holding banks, pull their house keys out of their Coach handbags, kiss them goodbye, and place the keys in the outstretched palm of the bank manager. They will then turn into hobos driving their SUVs (if they've managed to hang onto them), wandering the country, an army of yuppie Tom Joads. If they have any cash for gas, that is.

There probably won't be too much for the SUV hobos to see. Much of the country will look the same. Most streets will be a forest of For Sale and For Lease signs stuck haphazardly onto every standing property in default. Some parking lots will look as if a wild herd of roaming used cars (excuse me - "pre-owned") has decided to camp for the night. Those will be the used cars that some bank is desperately trying to unload, but few takers will be found. Some of the SUV hobos, unable to get fuel, will probably park alongside the herd of used cars, hoping they won't get hassled by the police, content to maintain their existence just by parking.

By then most of the damage will be done. The bearinator will lie back and groan, thinking of dessert. But dessert will just be a nibble or two. There just isn't much left to pick over.

OK, OK I'll stop with the melodrama.  But I'll at least try to keep you up to date with all the economic bearish news. Cheers.

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