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_______________THE RELUCTANT CAPITALIST: HOUSE FLASH BY HEATHER CHAPLIN (02/05/99)
	As a former homeowner -- my wife and I just sold a house and have returned happily to renting in France -- I enjoyed Heather Chaplin's article on home buying. However, while the emotional desire to own was well covered, I found the economic reasoning of the article to be badly distorted and even outright misleading. For starters, the "experts" Chaplin refers to (regarding calculations of whether it is a "good idea" to buy) are biased sources. It is in their interest to show you that you should buy now! Of course the National Association of Realtors would create some dime-store mathematical software that supports their profit margins! Chaplin did little research and no thinking here. Even worse, the article failed entirely to address the issue of cyclicality in the real estate industry. Home prices may go up, but they also go down. Even many real estate brokers -- who as a group are not, shall we say, "trustworthy" advisors to prospective buyers -- will admit this when questioned. That means that, when the market deflates in the next recession, the little model referred to above will be useless. But will the real estate folks care by then? No. It is their job to scare you into buying as quickly as possible during a period of precipitous appreciation like today. Is Ms. Chaplin too young to remember the real estate bubble of the 1980s? I watched in despair then as prices rose beyond what I thought I could ever pay in Boston and felt desperate to buy. But I realized something was wrong when we saw a one-bedroom condo, literally next to a smelly fish factory, for $120,000. I stepped back and said, "This doesn't make sense." Fortunately, we waited until the Bush recession to buy, when prices had dropped by 30 percent or more in the Boston area. Nonetheless, it was still frightening to lay out the cash. And when we decided to sell, out of sheer luck it was during another "up cycle" -- and our house sold for almost twice what we bought it for just five years before. I am glad the buyer did not think long enough to realize that it wasn't really worth it. People rushing to buy homes now, I predict, will come to regret it profoundly. In many areas, the market is simply too high, much worse even than the 1980s. It will fall. The key, I believe, is to buy during a recession. Forget the tendentious models based on dubious assumptions. -- Rob Crawford Recloses, France
_______________TOM DeLAY, DEFENDER OF SWEATSHOPS BY JEFF STEIN (02/04/99)
	Thank you for Jeff Stein's excellent exposé on Reps. Tom DeLay and Dick Armey's efforts on behalf of the garment industry in Saipan. I am the former human rights advocate for the Catholic Church in Saipan. I helped the church document the plight of Chinese garment workers and other international contract workers subject to inhumane working and living conditions in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI). DeLay has let his bias and greed get in the way of his judgment. By defending the interests of the CNMI he is fronting for not just the owners of sweatshops but also for corrupt totalitarian elements of the Chinese government. -- Phil Kaplan Seattle SALON | Feb. 9, 1999

R E C E N T L Y+| STOP USING OUR CHILDREN BY SHERRILYN A. IFILL

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