I propose a new best seller for our bookstores: “The Dummies Guide on How to Start a Recession.” The paperback will be retitled “Recession Recipes for Today.” First, we need an economy that is running smoothly and with almost everyone working. Then we need to get the Feds, the owners of the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and a few network news anchormen in one room. We add a few self-serving politicians to create a little spice. Then mix in a rise in interest rates and sprinkle in several “talking heads” talking about runaway inflation and suggesting that we should have another meeting to raise rates. We continue to mix this awhile, increase interest rates 17 times and make sure the media is all pumped up to warn us that a recession is soon to pop out of the oven. Add a few celebrities to the news to continue to keep the public’s attention, and most importantly, continue to fill the news with warnings of the slowing economy and predicting how retailers will be struggling in the coming months. Now the public is preparing for the worst; individuals are reducing their purchases and businesses are delaying capital improvements and reconsidering expansion plans. Yes, the media is right: a recession is coming. The economy is slowing down and businesses are laying off five to 10 percent of their labor force to survive. The media continues to promote the coming recession, and with continued higher interest rates, people are now losing their homes. Who should we blame for all this? What new regulations can we add to make it more difficult for businesses in the future? Our elected officials will, of course, point their collective fingers at real estate lenders and brokers for letting first-time home buyers purchase homes that they could not remotely afford. They should have disclosed that the home buyer’s income might not keep up with the doubling and tripling of their mortgage payments. Will the government come to the rescue by changing the rules to allow the unqualified home buyers to sit back and enjoy their new luxuries? Yes, the government will be here to save all these unfortunate opportunists who just wanted the American Dream before they collected their Social Security. The government will fix everything after they punish the lenders, the brokers and Wall Street for letting unqualified home buyers purchase homes they never should have bought. The good news is that with our government’s cure to this problem, we all get to share in paying for these unqualified homebuyer’s mistakes. We will pay in higher interest rates and fees, we will pay in depressed real estate values, and we will pay in higher taxes. Now, for those 95 percent of us who are fortunate enough to have kept our jobs and homes during the media-hyped recession, let’s talk about our own Los Angeles home front. We can continue to listen to the local politicians who want more affordable housing while at the same time causing developers years of delays, concocting all kinds of new and extra fees, and burdening them with burdensome and time-consuming paperwork. Our elected representatives never seem to realize that the unnecessary delays necessitate additional interest expense, require the hiring of ex-government employees turned consultants, and that adding all kinds of specialists will add significant costs to a project. Our local officials just want to strut in and wave their magic wand of new taxes and fees, raising false hopes that milking developers will correct financial problems, many of them of their own making. They want to add a new fee on to each parcel to fight crime. They add a fee to keep our trauma centers open while they are still closing them. Now they want us to be responsible for replacing or repairing the sidewalks in front of our homes when we sell them. (This is after already being levied a hefty transfer tax fee of thousands of dollars.) It’s nice that they want to move another governmental responsibility onto the already over-burdened homeowner. If you review your property tax bills, you will be amazed at how many voter-approved fees and taxes have been added on, with services promised and (possibly) forthcoming. If our political leaders spent more time making the system more efficient and less wasteful, they would not have to create new fees to solve their excessive spending. They would be amazed at the results. No matter the rate of inflation, our government looks for a way to increase spending at a higher level. What many of our elected officials are really cooking us is a recipe for disaster our city’s financial disaster. Rickey M. Gelb is managing general partner of Gelb Enterprises, a real estate development and property management company.