I appreciate the story about the Realtor taking the honesty approach.  It is a lesson on exactly what the United States needs most right now.  I often tried to warn people in discussion forums such as here that we were heading for a fall, but like the subject of global warming, i generally got attacked.

You see, it wasn't hard for me to recognize the signs.  Despite informing companies like AIG that I wanted off their mailing lists and pointing out the fact that I live with mental illness, have only SSI as an income until I can find a way to get my art advertised.  Someone would have to be a lunatic to loan someone like me money and expect that they would receive timely payments.  Realtors were so bad there for a time that I couldn't go anywhere, not even my doctor, without one trying to get me to by a house.  "Oh!  We have creative finacing options now" they would say and frankly I told them they were nuttier than me and leave me alone!  I told them they were going to destroy their own livlihood but they just tell me I'm too negative.

Nope!  Just a realist, probably why I can paint at near photo quality.

You see, everything to me is patterns, even things like history.  The reason we are doomed to keep repeating it is not because we fail to learn from it, but rather because we make such diligent effort to hide our mistakes that future generations can't learn from them.