Oblivious

Function: adjective
1 : lacking remembrance, memory, or mindful attention
2 : lacking active conscious knowledge or awareness -- usually used with of or to

Traveling from Ventura County to Orange County and back this week, to near the epicenter of the West Coast housing boom, it became obvious that the vast majority of people in Southern California (and probably the rest of the western world) have no idea that they could be in the middle of the most spectacular financial bubble in the history of the world. While, admittedly, this conclusion is based on a modest (almost infinitesimal) sample size, it seems clear that expanding the sample size would not alter the conclusion.

People go about their daily lives - driving their SUVs and sporty imports, talking on their cell phones, picking up their $4 morning lattes, scurrying about at lunch time - all blissfully unaware of the impending doom predicted by more and more financial writers and market historians, who, it seems, are equally unaware of the magnitude of the bliss that the masses are currently experiencing.

The bliss that comes with outrageously high home prices and constant motion - the feeling of wealth, far greater and far sooner than anything their parents experienced, combined with the convenience of not having enough time in their daily lives to stop and think about the world around them.

Rich and getting richer, with no time to ponder how absurd it has all become - oblivious to the fraudulent nature of it all and the growing potential for disaster.

The constant motion and the housing wealth, though in most cases completely unrelated, seem to complement each other nicely - hard work begets riches, as their parents used to say. They are working hard, they are getting rich - therefore, they must be deserving of their housing wealth. That's the way the world works, at least in Southern California.

It all seems so natural after the last ten years.

ooo

Hotels are coming up with more ingenious ways to separate you from your money. On top of the desk in the hotel room, within easy arm's reach when seated, was placed an ordinary 16-ounce bottle of Arrowhead water (estimated cost to the hotel - 15 cents) with this notice placed over the top - the text was facing the wall:


Click to enlarge

We can only imagine the instructions to the cleaning staff about the proper placement of both the water bottle and the notice, as well as the details of how the charges make their way onto hotel bills.

ooo

On the return trip, a leisurely drive north on Pacific Coast Highway from Santa Monica, the surfer/hippie/beach crowd seem to have been largely unaffected by the California housing boom - at least by the looks of what they drive and what they wear. If they are homeowners, they haven't tapped their home equity to buy new cars, that's for sure. Maybe money and material things just aren't that important to them - how quaint.

Looking up into the Malibu hills recalls a time, not too many years ago, when one would think "that home must be worth a million dollars" and that somehow, that was special - how quaint.