In 1977, I had the great privilege of driving along a highway overlooking the fantastic red cliffs of the Italian Riviera. I was on a pristine toll road that looked like it had just been finished. I found it odd that there was hardly anyone else on the highway. Eventually my beautiful companion and I turned off the road and headed north to go through Milan and on to Switzerland.
As we drove away from the toll road we noted there was a lot of other traffic on the smaller road without tolls. At a rest stop we asked people about the odd situation of driving on this wonderful superhighway with hardly any other cars. We were told that since there was a toll, few people were willing to spare the money needed to drive on this new highway, so they stayed away in droves.
I learned a little bit about the financial problems that had gripped Italy at that time. It seemed the situation had been propelled by the oil crisis. The cost of gas had certainly gone through the roof. People adjusted by driving a lot less and staying off toll roads, which would have cost a great deal of money if taken daily, unlike the one-time payment my companion and I made as we drove through.
I found it almost charming as I stopped to gas the car up and gave the attendant a multi thousand lire note, and he returned several different sizes of bank notes printed from all manner of different banks. During the financial crisis banks had issued their own money. He didn’t have the small change so he gave me some chocolate and two cans of juice to make up some of it and I agreed that he should keep the change on the rest to avoid the complication of finding something of very little value to give me.
It was unsettling to exchange money that way because it reflected the chaos that had become of the financial situation in the country, but everyone just took it in stride and went along without panic and hysteria. Everyone simply maintained an amused acceptance of the situation. All gas stations, restaurants, banks and in fact every business we came upon was doing fine. They just worked without a uniform currency.
Ever since those long ago days I have thought back on my time in Italy with great fondness and I note that the economy in that country as well as here in Canada has been a series of ups and downs through the almost 40 years since. We were in some crazy financial times in the early 1980s in our country. So we have no reason to be smug here in Canada today while the rest of the world grapples with financial calamity. We have had our challenges like everybody else including Italy and although we are doing well just now, we will be challenged again.
The down times here are always viewed with near panic by people with stocks and market investments and yet the times of good fortune are hardly ever acknowledged. Today, as I hear of economic challenges in Italy, I remember it was not long ago that Italy’s robust economy became the fourth largest in the world after the chaos that I had driven through in the 1970s. It could easily be so again.
If you asked all my friends and I mean both of them, they would tell you that I am hardly a financial genius. I don’t own my own home. Like the old joke goes, I don’t even have enough money to pay attention. But I know I am right when I say the world will get through this current financial depression. I am old enough now that I have seen this cycle a few times. This is not my first rodeo.
If I was a Realtor today I would tell my clients get ready because everything I see going on tells me that real estate values are about to go up again, in fact they may jump in significant percentages. Today as people talk about the financial peril that Italy is going through they will tell you in the same breath that the highest-priced, most desirable property is in Tuscany.
There is no better investment, no better thing to buy, no better hedge in any economy than real estate. Like the great American cowboy, Will Rogers said: “Buy land, they’re not making any more of it.” There is no better place to buy it than in Canada. Get out there and get it while you can.
Heino Molls is publisher of REM. Email [email protected].
