Life Is A Highway

Did I mention that the Jeep is up and running again?

The radiator turned out to be the real culprit, although there were definitely indications that the water pump had been rusting, and the thermostat was probably in need of a replacement.

So, after all of the diagnosis, the guys over on NAXJA were right on in their guesses.  Well, most of them were, at least... The head passed its compression check, so that's one less thing to worry about for now.

But, my Jeep's problems pale a little bit in comparison to about 750 or so people here in Tucson. 

As I posted last week, First Magnus went from being a local success story to every working person's worst nightmare.  Today, they officially filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, and they had their mortgage license suspended on Monday.  Of the 100 or so people still working at their headquarters this week, about 60 or so are actually being paid, and most of those are in either finance, IT or Human Resources.  Some employees have been given 12 week employment contracts, so the future is definitely not rosey.

That's not to say that this wasn't self-inflicted in a way.... Magnus had a very fragile business model, and apparently they didn't spare a lot of expense.  The rent at their new headquarters was said to run $100K per month, and there were two corporate jets parked in a hangar at Tucson Int'l (with their landing gear now firmly secured by the aircraft equivilent of a Denver Boot, lest they skip out on paying their bills at the airport). 

Being privately held, there didn't appear to be a lot of reason for restraint and perhaps having some cash stashed away for a rainy day. 

Or, in the case of First Magnus, a perfect storm...

As bad as things have been in the airline industry, the housing industry is on target to lose more workers this year alone than the airlines did over the three years after 9/11.

It's estimated that there have been about 87,000 job cuts this year related to the collapse of the housing market, with over 35,000 people being directly affected by the meltdown in the mortgage industry alone. That doesn't even start to consider the hundreds of thousands of people who will now not be able to refinance loans they never should have been approved for in the first place, and will face almost certain foreclosure. Home foreclosure filings in July were 93 percent higher than a year ago, and up 9 percent from June, to almost 180,000.

So.... I'm still glad I don't have a house on the market right now, and I'm not looking forward to the idea of putting one on the market anytime soon.