"Change is good." That's what the head of an acquiringcompany once told me and other employees of a business he wastaking over. For all the spin about mergers and acquisitions beinggood for companies--the majority do not pan out except for thebankers who engineer the deals and then later often come in todisassemble the conglomerations. In the case of my company, changedidn't feel good and turned out to be bad. Indeed thebusiness failed and had to be sold off in parts with many peoplelosing jobs along the way.

But whether change is good or not, isn't so much theissue. Change is inevitable and often how well people andbusinesses cope with change determines how successful they canbe.The need for change typically signals that our systems,businesses, and lifestyles need modification. The way we have beendoing things can't be sustained without re-adapting.That's what's happening now in the U.S. andit's a struggle for all of us, especially when we havethought of ourselves as number one, impervious, the beacon of theworld, etc., etc., etc., blah, blah, blah.

The U.S. economy and real estate businesses are dealing with awellspring of change right now. Our high wage scale businesses areunder relentless pressures from lower cost competitors overseas.The government and many consumers are overleveraged, and we mustpay down our debt and spend less. The transaction-based economy ofthe past several decades has hit the wall without easy credit andall the middlemen, including brokers and lawyers, who made heftyincomes off lots of deals are on their backsides. We need tore-regulate the transaction markets to tamp down bad behaviors,which will limit future transaction volumes and broker/bankerprofitability. The investment industry will fight that change. Thenthere's healthcare and all the concern about transforminga system that everybody agrees doesn't work that well andis certainly economically unsustainable. But many people andbusinesses fear that any change could disadvantage them and opposereforms. At the fringe, some folks worry about governmenttakeover.