Mr. Manarin: Obviously the mood is doom and gloom out there, as the media stir the fear. That level of negativity only happens at or near market bottom environments. There used to be an old recipe that I had called "market bottom stew" and it's pretty much adding all of these negative ingredients that we're deluged with by the media and when everybody is thoroughly disgusted, panicking and selling out of sheer fear - that's usually the market bottom environment. I think we're in the midst of brewing a wonderful batch of "market bottom stew" right now and all you have to do for ingredients is turn on CNBC or the other 24/7 news outfits in the morning, and you're going to get a good bowl of "market bottom stew." We can take some of these issues that are bothering folks one at a time and I can address them for you. Let's start with housing because that's what started a lot of this. We won't take the time to point fingers behind us, but looking forward, I just a saw statistic that showed housing starts near an all time low here in the US. That's good news because that's the only way you're going to get rid of the excess supply of unsold homes. Somewhere - in my opinion, within a year - the existing surplus of housing will be soaked up and then builders are going to have to start building again. Here in the Midwest the builders are telling me the traffic going through their models has rocketed. Perhaps the combination of low prices and low interest rates is already starting the turn; certainly by the end of 2009 I would think that would be the case on a national basis. The normal demand for new housing is about 1.5 million units - new households per year - and they are building less than 500,000 now. So it's a question of when, not whether. That to me is a positive waiting to happen. What else is scaring the folks?
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