Is Anybody Worried About This?

Here's one out of left field for you Detroit Tiger fans. With 4 of their players, including 2 major stars, Magglio Ordonez and Carlos Guillen, being natives of Venezuela, is anybody worried that Venezuela's left leaning president, Hugo Chavez could literally end their baseball careers. Pitcher Wil Ledezma and utility infielder Omar Infante are also Venezuelans. I bring this up because Chavez has recently nationalized the Venezuelan oil industry and just this past weekend, closed down his nations top ranked television station, TV-Caracas, after 53 years on the air, allegedly because they were anti-Chavez.

More and more, Mr. Chavez seems to be following in the footsteps of his hero, Cuban boss Fidel Castro and that's my point. I remember as a young boy, Castro banning his Cuban major leaguers from returning to play American baseball. Some of them at that time, like Reds slugger Tony Perez (then playing in the minor leagues) and future Tiger Tony Taylor (then playing with the Cubs), elected not to return to Cuba in order to continue their major league careers. They were then forever banned from returning to their homeland. To this day, the only way a Cuban can play major league baseball is to defect and seek political asylum. It's a shame, because over the years, Cuba had produced some great major leaguers. Mr. Chavez has recognized that the world depends on his nation's oil supply. When will he notice, as Castro did nearly 50 years ago, that his second biggest export is major league baseball players!

Recently, I've been taking clients out to look at new construction homes, "spec" homes if you will. Homes built by the builder on the speculation that someone will but them. Many of those homes I've looked at, have been sitting vacant for not only months, but several years! Their prices have fallen drastically from what the builders were originally asking and their are some great, new home bargains out there. Recently, the U.S. Commerce Department reported that the sale of new construction, soared in April. But now, predictions out of Washington are that it will take at least until 2011 for new home sales to completely recover to where they were 3 or 4 years ago!!