"Simon Hawke - Wizard 7 - The Wizard of Camelot" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hawke Simon)

their
value, as well. Sellers were anxious to get as much as they possibly could,
but
with no one offering any financing, cash had to be the bottom line, and so
prices fell dramatically. Unfortunately, the value of what I'd saved had
fallen
dramatically, as well. With financial institutions failing left and right, I
was
lucky to have pulled out my money when I had and to have spent it while it
was
still worth something. At least we had a home. We had precious little else.

The problem, once I had my family settled in our new home, was how to afford
its
upkeep. On the plus side of the ledger, we owned it, free and clear, and we
didn't have to worry about such things as taxes and insurance. No one was
writing any policies, because the insurance industry had collapsed, and no
one
was paying any taxes, because the beleaguered government had lost practically
all ability to enforce collection, save for such built-in revenues as sales
taxes, which had risen alarmingly as a consequence. In short, the government
was
quickly going broke. In the meantime, what budget there was went to support
essential services such as hospitals and fire departments, the military and
the
police, and so forth. Since the most densely populated urban centers were the
greatest drain on these limited resources, the outlying areas had to go
begging
and were largely left to fend for themselves.
This meant that if our house burned down, or was vandalized or burgled,
neither
it nor our few possessions could be replaced. Food was becoming more and more
expensive, and with constant power outages, rapidly diminishing supplies of
heating oil, and the scarcity of gas, we were forced to rely on wood or coal
for
fuel. The price of coal had skyrocketed, and the price of cord wood was
rising
rapidly, as well. The petroleum reserves had been almost entirely depleted,
and
what petrol was available was rationed among essential government, medical,
police, and military personnel.

It seemed pointless to bemoan the policies that had brought about such a
disastrous state of affairs, because environmentalists and scientists had
been
predicting it for years and we had no one but ourselves to blame. Toward the
end, people had started to wake up at last, and serious attempts were made to
practice conservation and responsible resource management, but it was simply
too
little, too late. The time had come to pay the piper Everything was going to