Hawaii’s real estate market was softening, the U.S. economy was battling recession and the state had just seen its largest-ever mass layoff.

The failure to approve a multi-billion dollar mass transit system on Oahu dominated local headlines for weeks.

Sound familiar?

That was 1992. It was the beginning of the longest and deepest economic downturn in state history.

Some local policy makers will tell you that things are very different today. They pat themselves on the back and say that the economy has made a lot of structural changes and is better able to weather the financial storms that hit our shores.

I’m not entirely convinced by that.

The shutdown of Aloha Airlines -- whose impact on the local zeitgeist was similar to that of the 1992 closure of Hamakua Sugar -- is worrisome.

High fuel costs are affecting that moves from car sales, shipping costs, air fares and visitor arrivals.

The financial turmoil in the credit markets probably won’t have as big an impact here as the collapse of the 1990s Japanese investment bubble but it definitely will be felt by the local real estate sector. (Vulture investors -- who made millions off of the 1990s recession -- are beginning to lick their chops.)

I suspect we’re at one of those critical economic junctures where the policies we adopt now will have long lasting impact. It would be tragic if we allowed history to repeat itself.

Tags: Economy

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 28th, 2008 at 7:30 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.