[ladelfina]

brewer, what's up.. why are you so nasty to al? Maybe you are analyzing tree by tree without looking at the forest as al is doing? Or maybe there is some history I'm not aware of.

There are any number of graphs tracking housing prices; this is just one set chosen at random. Ignore the discussion of one market vs. another; just look at the red lines versus the green lines.
How the Bay Area caused home prices to go up nationally… [Burbed.com]
The further away green gets from red, the more situation = bad, which you kind of acknowledge. But, no fear...

Quote:

creative legislators, reglators, etc. seem to be working out solutions

The more 'creative' these people get, the more likely they could actually make things worse. There is only one SOLUTION to houses that cost too much, and that is for prices to fall. You can't legislate away the price difference unless the gov. starts buying up homes/mortgages outright. Giving $15k downpayments and other nonsense only prolongs the pain, it would seem to me. Taking an aspirin will lower the fever, but you still have to fight off the infection. Is the economy strong enough to absorb the declines? Are wages going to magically go up and start closing the red/green gap so these homes can actually get paid off? Is unemployment going down or up? Are retail stores opening or closing? Are companies hiring or laying off? Do people have savings to tide them over and keep payments up when they're between jobs? I think elsewhere you said you found prices to be unrealistic. 5-7 million people per year have been buying into, and continue to buy into.. what you call unrealistic prices; how do we make that go away?

Seeing that these assets and the loans against them are a huge part of the economy, there's no way this can't be bad news and it will get worse. That is just my humble opinion. Look at how unstable things are now.. with the decline not yet near the bottom.

As for banks "getting this behind them".. why do I still hear of "pick a payment" loans, interest-only loans, etc.? The kind of legislation that would impress me would be making interest-only loans illegal... anyone see a downside to that?