This past couple of days I was thinking about all of the blue roofs in Puerto Rico.
Last week when I was there, we took a flight over the island and saw hundreds of roofs covered in blue tarps. In fact, the Army Corps of Engineers installed their 50,000th “blue roof” this month.
The magnitude of damage to the US Territory of Puerto Rico is almost unbelievable. For example, there is an estimated 100,000 damaged power polls. Regardless of the actual man-hours it will take to fix those, just think of the raw resources – the actual polls.
While I was there, I tried to talk with the power workers that were staying in the same hotel I was. Right now, there are currently over 4,000 power workers who have been flown in from the US and Canada to fix Puerto Rico’s power grid. Almost all of them said that their biggest hang-up was the supply chain. They couldn’t get power cables and polls shipped in fast enough.
On one hand, it seems like an enormous amount of work to do… almost impossible.
On the other hand, if you go to the island and see the work that is being done, then you’d know. This is the real deal. Things are being fixed.
Here is the bottom-line: Whatever you are hearing on the news, whatever FEMA did or didn’t do, however Trump responded or didn’t respond, the truth is that things are getting fixed right now.
In fact, while I was in San Juan, the city seemed almost completely normal. Markets were stocked full with fruits and vegetables, the CVS pharmacy (yes there are major chains on the island) was fully stocked with prescription drugs, and restaurants were busy serving food. Business as normal.
The only thing that was really noticeable, was that a lot of the traffic signals were still out. But, surprisingly, traffic flowed very well and drivers were extremely courteous of each other.
Now, it is true that many people are still without power. And that needs to be fixed ASAP.
But… here is another reality… look at other parts of the world that have been struck with disaster. Whether it’s from a tsunami, an earthquake, or a hurricane… there are VERY few countries in the world that have the ability to recover so quickly.
There are some countries that are still covered with rubble from earthquakes that happened in the 1980’s (one of the capitals in Central America is just now recovering… almost 30 years later.)
This isn’t a United States exceptionalism attitude. Instead, it’s just the truth. The resources that the US throws at major disasters is UNBELIEVABLE compared to most other countries.
As an investor, it’s important to have this perspective. To understand the bigger picture and to invest based off of what you know.
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Ok, shifting gears…
I want to show you a picture from the penthouse apartment of a 21-story building.
This is the view. The owner, who is a good friend of mine, bought this apartment very recently for $90k.
That’s not a typo.
He’s doing a complete remodel of the apartment… which sold for about $500k only several years ago.
This one example makes Puerto Rico very interesting, right?
Well, I’m going to share something with you tomorrow that is ten times more interesting than that. It is easily the best way to grow your wealth. And almost no one knows about it… yet.
Also, starting tomorrow, you can join us when we go down there in April.
