Sound Familiar?
Here is an excerpt from a piece written by Benjamin Franklin (yes, THAT Benjamin Franklin) in his autobiography, which I am currently reading. It seems quite apropos to today's market and I thought we might take a lesson from it. The time reference of the piece is the early 1700's, well before the American Revolution. The young Franklin had just opened a printing shop in Philadelphia.
"There are croakers in every country, always boding its ruin. Such a one there lived in Philadelphia; a person of note, an elderly man with a wise look and a very grave manner of speaking; his name was Samuel Mickle. This gentleman, a stranger to me, stopped me one day at my door and asked me if I was the young man who had lately opened a new printing house. Being answered in the affirmative, he said he was sorry for me, because it was an expensive undertaking and the expense would be lost; for Philadelphia was a sinking place, the people already half-bankrupts or near being so; all of the appearances of the contrary, such as new buildings and the rise of rents, being to his certain knowledge fallacious, for they were in fact among the things that would ruin us. Then he gave me such a detail of misfortunes now existing or that were soon to exist that he left me half melancholy. Had I known him before I engaged in this business, probably I never should have done it. This person continued to live in this decaying place and to declaim in the same strain, refusing for many years to buy a house there because all was going to destruction; and at last I had the pleasure of seeing him give five times as much for one as he might have bought it for when he first began croaking."
Bob Dohn
Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage
140-A S. Roselle Rd., Schaumburg, IL 60193
Direct phone: 847-301-3126
Web: www.BobDohn.com
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