Everything changes, ages and transforms itself.

We think of our own life.

We got married in the 1970s. We had nothing but an old rusted-out sports car and a job that paid about $39,000 a year. One day, driving home from work, we went over a bump; the floor of the car gave way and the seat fell through to the road.

We were young and energetic. We bought an old farmhouse and fixed it up ourselves. Building materials were expensive, so we often went to the dump to find things we could recycle. We saved our pennies. We worked hard.

By the early 80s, we were probably entering the basement of the middle class. But then, misfortune! We got divorced and were broke again.

That didn't set us back for long. We remarried and started again. At the time, the assets page of the Bonner family accounts could be reduced to an index card: one blue Datsun pickup truck with the door falling off, and one very small publishing business that lost money every year.

Baltimore was cheap back then. The city was so desperate for taxpayers, it gave away buildings to anyone who was fool enough to move into them. Our office was bought for $1. Our house cost $27,000, purchased on credit from the seller. Ignoring the gunshots and crack dealers, we went to work.

Once again, we did everything ourselves, by hand, scavenging materials wherever we could find them. And once again, our fortunes improved. But as life grew more comfortable, gradually the habits of thrift were cast off.

We were appalled when Elizabeth wanted another car...used, of course. But now, we have four new ones.

We were indignant when she wanted to call in a professional cabinetmaker. Weren't our homemade cabinets good enough for her?

We were actually alarmed when she wanted to move into a real house, in a good neighborhood - it would cost real money. Where would we get it, we wondered? But, we soon yielded, and then we had a bigger house to heat. This new house required more serious - more expensive - furniture.

It also required more insurance.
 
There was a boom in America throughout the 80's and 90's, and we boomed along with it. By the mid-90s, we were ready to head for new challenges. We pulled up our roots, moved to Europe, and found them. But, we had to leave at home, like an old pet, a whole new set of thrifty inhibitions. In our new life, we needed more new furniture, more expenses, and more help. We bought a large house in the country, but we discovered that we needed to rent an apartment in the city, too.

The children had to go to a proper school and we had to work in a proper office. Proper school? What was wrong with the public school? It had been good enough for us, hadn't it?

"Times have changed," we were told. Now the public schools - even in France - are said to be violent and incompetent.

And since we now had two residences, we needed help to take care of them. We needed a cleaning lady. Oh, and a gardener, too. One thing leads to another. One old habit falls like a Baltimore row house. The next thing you know, the whole block has been taken down and replaced with upscale condos and coffee shops. Jobs that used to be done out of happy necessity are taken up grudgingly...out of a lingering sense of duty or nostalgia.

"Why do we have to do this?" groan the boys, when we get them out to fix a wall or clear some brush. "Why don't you just call someone who knows what he is doing?"

On family vacations, we remember, we used to crowd everyone into the van and drive up to Canada. In the early 90s, we rented a house on a small lake in Nova Scotia. Mice ran around in the corners; the place smelled like kerosene. But, it was $230 for a week. We couldn't beat it.

"This is horrible," said Elizabeth.

And it was horrible, but we enjoyed it just the same.

*** Bankrate.com has recently ranked Baltimore, home to the DR HQ, as one of the top ten cities in the United States whose real estate bubble is going to burst.

Reports show that the market is overpriced and homes are over-valued by as much as 17 percent.

"17 percent?!" chortled Addison. "Try 50 or 60 percent."

He described a "shell" that he looked at in Charm City's historic Fells Point. The row home was four stories, and as he and the real estate agent approached the fourth floor, she warned Addison to not go all the way up - the rotting floorboards may not hold.

And how much was being asked for this non-heated, dilapidated castle?

$375,000.

Overvalued? That might be the understatement of the year...especially, as Bill pointed out, above, since the same home could have been purchased for literally one dollar a couple of decades ago.

These ridiculous prices are finally starting to make an impact on prospective buyers, when last year, people wouldn't have batted an eye at these prices.

"I am guessing that a growing crisis in consumer confidence will hurt both the economy and the real estate market," writes one Realtor on a blog.

"With public fits over war, the economy and other global and local maladies, the mood to spend big money to nest may be dwarfed by hesitation, fear and financial mania. War's end may inspire optimism in some but cynicism in others. The point: we are in the middle of something, not the beginning, not the end. Stuck in the middle, a place where fretting thrives."

In anonymous postings, the famously tightlipped and ever-optimistic real estate professionals spill their secret worries on a real estate blog, created to get a handle on what's really going on with this bubble.

CNN Money reports: "When Brad Inman of Inman News, which tracks the real estate industry and is widely read by industry insiders, recently gave real estate agents the opportunity to blog about market conditions, they almost uniformly described them as bad - and getting worse".

Here is a sampling of their comments:

"Portland, Oregon is mixed...more inventory, sitting longer...sellers no longer king."

""Minneapolis/St.Paul . . . 15 houses per buyer. If we had buyers. Huge inventory in every price range. More foreclosure properties coming on daily."

"Northern Ca. Let's not beat around the bush here. There is a slow down!! Home prices are not going up. Sales are down."

So, there you have it, straight from the horse's mouth...

*** "You sir...are the scourge of the earth."

Markets make opinions; we're fond of that saying here at The Daily Reckoning. Oil hitting an all-time high is making some pretty strange opinions, indeed. Yesterday, while doing a call-in radio show with Andy Johnson in Jacksonville, Florida, a caller suggested we were "evil" for helping readers make money by investing in oil.

Would they have been as perversely upset if oil were still hovering around $30 a barrel? $50 bucks? Not likely.

But times are changing. It hasn't happened yet, but historically high oil prices are bound to slow consumption and demand in the U.S. economy sooner or later. And there's a chance we could see a 'fat tail' spike up above $100 bucks a barrel soon. Think of the evil profits you could make then... Heh. Heh.

Bill Bonner is the President of Agora Publishing.  For more on Bill Bonner, visit The Daily Reckoning.