A number of years ago, a retired oil company executive took me to lunch at the Chicago Museum of Art. Pointing to a nearby table, he observed: ?The Home on the Range Boys? ate daily at that spot for years. Without waiting for an interrogatory from me, he launched into a rather shaky warble.

?Home, Home on the Range

?Where the Deer and the Antelope play

?Where Seldom is Heard a Discouraging Word

?And the Skies are not Cloudy all Day.?

Continuing on in normal voice, he identified these men as being cronies and hangers on to former Illinois Governor Otto Kerner who later chaired a well-acclaimed National Commission on Urban Violence in the United States.

These honours occurred before he spent the declining years of his life, residing in a one room condominium without a view at the Federal Penitentiary in Joliet, Illinois. This unhappy state of affairs came about because the owner of the major racetrack in the area listed a bribe to the then Governor Kerner to obtain added racing dates as a ?business expense? on all relevant tax forms which she filed. Unlike poor Otto, she escaped unscathed.

?After that, ?The Home on the Range Boys? quietly faded away,? he said. ?However, while they were on top, no matter what you wanted, they could get it for you. They always could make you happy.

?No one on earth always can make you happy. I never could understand Kerner hanging around with them.?

He added: ?Anyone doing business with those guys had to be either stupid or crooked. Whatever else Kerner was, he sure wasn?t stupid.?

Without drawing overly direct parallels to the above story, the current Bermuda real estate environment ? both residential and commercial ? motivates me to start humming the famous cowboy ditty, almost automatically, each time I revisit the Island.

Invariably, in the meantime, prices have risen, unfulfilled demand has escalated, product quality often has deteriorated and, most reprehensibly of all, handsomely paid intermediaries continue to send out seductive suggestions that the soon-to-be-built condominium bought today as an investment can be rented profitably after construction and then sold for a major profit in a still overwhelmingly prosperous Bermuda five or ten years from now.

I don?t think even ?The Home on the Range? lunch boys would try to push this particular act of deception.

Today, in Bermuda, the seemingly all-pervasive aura of economic infallibility reminds me eerily of Dallas just before the Savings and Loan Crisis of the mid-1980s, New York before the ill-conceived 1986 Tax Act which froze commercial construction in the US for a decade, or more immediately, the Dot-Com crisis which has led currently to 20 percent commercial vacancy rates in Boston and other high-tech capitals throughout the United States.

You may say: ?Can?t happen in Bermuda!?

?Really??

?Why not??

Here are five of whole bagfuls of possible scenarios for oncoming trouble. Most of these outcomes that could trigger local economic catastrophe are totally out of local control.

1. A repeat of September 11, 2001 in the United States.

2. A continuance of the recent worldwide extraordinary atmospheric upheavals typified by Hurricane Fabian, the four hurricanes in Florida in September of 2004, the current hurricane destruction in the Caribbean and the like.

3. The insurance and financial services scandals in the US reach critical mass, causing untold negative consequences among reinsurers, lawyers, accountants, stock brokers and the like in the United States and in Bermuda.

4. Fuelled by the ongoing war in Iraq, the weakening American dollar worldwide and unstable, high oil prices the American deficit continues to soar. Eventually American taxpayers demand for American Corporations ?to pay their fair share? well could lead to a Bush Administration led corporate inversion campaign to make the Kerry-Edwards rhetoric on the subject seem to come from kindergarten in comparison.

5. ?60 Minutes? or ?Nightline? seizes on the recent tragic deaths of the two American female tourists on motorbikes to do an expos? on ?Dysfunctional Tourism in Bermuda.?

Items covered could include: general carnage on the roadways, burglaries and robberies aimed against tourists, high prices in Bermuda compared to the tourist destination competition, the Front Street nightly drug scene, the still uncompleted Berkeley School, the possible bankruptcy of Delta Airlines, locals increasingly choosing to shop on-line or overseas, and, yes, even poor Rebecca Middleton once again.

There is nothing encouraging or pretty in the above list.

But some or all of these potential disasters could occur and soon and not necessarily one after the other, but in an undifferentiated blob. As much as possible, Bermuda should prepare now for potential ?rainy days? to come. (Catastrophic events can occur so quickly today ? witness 9/11 ? that there may not be an anticipatory period of ?cloudy days? to blunt the impact).

Someday, perhaps today, tomorrow or one, two or three years from now, the inevitability of cycles eventually will make itself known in Bermuda. What concrete steps can be taken in the meantime to ameliorate lurking perils?

Launching an Island-wide, overall ?Smart Growth Real Estate Development Plan,? severely punishing all drug motivated crime, addressing the foreign motorbike dilemma, finishing the Berkeley School, avoiding highly dubious ?so-called affordable housing? condominium projects and protecting the remaining pristine Island coastline and Hamilton skyline from invasive condominium and industrial development all would be good places to start.

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