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Interesting that there are always the same few who attack the messenger.
I doubt anyone imagines that housing alone was responsible for this mess but it is both a symptom and precipitant.
"What is currently going on is a restructuring of the market to restore confidence in the market. The actual economy is not the issue and is largely solid. Months ago I pointed out the woes of the auto industry as being a much more serious problem with longer lasting consequences."
Finance is a large chunk of the economy 20%? , housing x%, and the consumer 70%. If the consumers' income has been constrained in real terms for 20 years (discounting the effects of the top few %) while their expenses rise they are not going to keep the ship floating. While exports kept GDP up perhaps last qtr if you believe any government stats, this seems to have been largely in food commodities not manufacturing reflecting the effects of weather and corn/energy susbsidies etc. Cue someone to bleat but we have not met the criteria for a recession yet.
If you have a financial crisis it effects main street because they can't get finance ( despite the almost a trillion put in emergency funding so far to aid liquidity).
The DJIA graph over 5 years? Yes it is higher try taking inflation off.
The article Sailaway cites is very much the perennial bleat that taxes should be reduced.
My recollection is that total debt is now over 300% of GDP.
There is a shortfall in funding for pension funds and social security and probably medical care let alone wars and bailing out bankers.
Yet we still get the tired old the economy is fine, and hackneyed party political prejudices.
What is the saying? Roast the pigs and fleece the sheep?
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