Debtors, Savers, and the Southwest

In traveling to Arizona and back last week, it was hard not to notice all the For Sale signs and all the "Just Reduced" placards resting on the top of many of them.

A big brown cloud had settled in on top of Phoenix as we passed through and ads for new homes and luxury condos seemed to be everywhere. A return to that part of the country will be a long time coming - what summertime is like in southern Arizona will be rightly left to the imagination.

Coming back through San Bernardino County and into the northern part of Los Angeles County, it was also hard not to notice the glut of new homes that have gone up since having passed through those parts not long ago.

Many of the billboards shouted "$0 Move-In" with big bold letters, as if it were used cars that were being offered for sale rather than new homes costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. Rows and rows of newly constructed homes with great big signs begging unsuspecting, doe-eyed, first time buyers to take a chance on a house in the middle of a desert.

We'll see how that works out.

Talking to and watching the locals when you're away from home is usually interesting. Normally, lots of new and different things are seen and heard, but few of them were memorable this time - a preoccupation with the holidays apparently provided sufficient distraction from the mundane.

All the local news personalities are so bubbly and so happy to be where they are. Surely that's at the top of the checklist when it comes time for performance reviews by the news director - dour weathermen don't last long in the local news business. Only the perky prevail.

Waffle Houses are pretty much the same everywhere. Why are there none in California?

Reading USAToday when it is found outside your hotel room door always provides a glimpse into what the rest of the country is thinking, wanting, or needing. The short, simply written stories along with colorful graphics make this a pleasure to sample occasionally.

It will never be confused with The Economist.

The advertising found in the nation's number one newspaper is a good barometer of how things are going in the country. Very few local or regional ads and no spots for luxury condos in Phoenix, but lots of products with national appeal such as the two below.

Debtors and savers are having a dramatic parting of ways in the latter half of this decade - it was odd to see these two advertisements right next to each other at the bottom of a page in the first section.

If there were ever two advertisements that appealed to two completely different groups of people it is these two, but debt and gold are becoming more and more important with each new year. This is probably just the beginning for both debt counseling services and sellers of precious metals - both should be growth industries in the years ahead.

It's ironic to see the $12,000 minimum for debt counseling. That used to be a lot of money and a lot of debt, but not anymore - it seems that after the housing boom, the calibration for unacceptable debt loads has ratcheted higher.

The advertisement for gold sounds like something from the National Association of Realtors. The condescending tone of the phrase "then you're missing out" sounds like something David Lereah used to say back in 2005 about real estate.

Times change, debtors learn, gold endures.