This is just a disaster and a sign of the rot in the thinking (such as it is) of our policy makers and elites. They are completely deluded, useless, really. Since they all belong to the same supper club, can we conclude that this is the end product of an Ivy League education?

We are now a nation where $11 an hour jobs (with no health care) are all that's left. Sorry, but that's reality, and housing has a lot of catching up to do.

You miss the point. If homeowners flip houses for no reason other than a tax credit, a realtor might make some money. Realtors having more money is a good thing for society (according to the National Association of Realtors).

We have a valuable resource here.

He seems especially valuable in light of the PBS documentary, "The Warning"
(watchable online). Such very bad economists, and such ...I can't think of a civil term for the folly of the people in the House and Senate.

Maybe a better idea is to offer young immigrants, with cash and education, citizenship if they come and buy a house.

Remember the apocalyptic retirement bubble where the needs of the old would crush the young because of the decline in the ratio of working to retired people.

Voila`, housing and working age population thing solved.

What ? Whadaya mean there aren't enough jobs around for the current workforce, let alone an influx of foreigners. Why the company I work for can't find American workers (engineering). The place is full of green card engineers.

@zinc, there is no shortage of US workers, just employers that won't pay enough to attract the workers they want.

Couldn't the same be said of most of the stimulus spending? It can't stop the inevitable reorganization of the economy. It can only slow it down.

The construction industry bears little blame for the bubble, yet it is a major sufferer. Some of the impact is invisible as they hire lots of illegal immigrants. The money would be better spent on keeping them going at a reasonable level, maybe through public works. Why aren't we hearing from their trade organizations?

The realty industry is itself a strange thing in a supposedly free-market economy. There are lots of individual participants yet somehow they get away with price-fixing. Their associations have real monetary clout which probably had a major impact on the bubble - Lereah and others managed to get into the media very frequently.

Book review from the Amazon link:

“An important book, whether you agree with the author (as I do) that housing will remain an excellent investment or are convinced that home prices are poised for a plunge, David Lereah lays out a compelling vision of housing as a continuing positive investment—and how you can profit from real estate if you already own the home you live in, are looking to move from rental housing to an owner-occupied home, or want to use real estate as an investment.” —DAVID BERSON, CHIEF ECONOMIST, FANNIE MAE

Hmmm. Dean rightly complains about the economists who missed the housing bubble. But, what I am curious about is what contributed the most to them missing the bubble? Is it: a) They really know better, but it pays the bills, so who cares?, b) They don't know better because they are stupid, c) They don't know better because their belief system (ideology) overrules their judgment of the facts, or d) Something else? I would be interested in hearing his thoughts on this-apologies in advance if he's already blogged about it.

If at the NAR they think that a tax credit of $15,000 is needed to sell houses, does it means that they think that the prices of houses, on the average, are still $15,000 overpriced, and thus, that the prices have still to go down another $15,000 before the housing market restart functionning normally ?

If my memory is correct, the latest real estate numbers showed existing home sales up about 9% for September and sale price of existing homes down about 8%. The uptick in sales supposedly was due to the first-time homebuyer credit.

Well, the credit clearly was not sufficient to stem the decline in home prices.

Further, the forecast is for unemployment to continue to rise into 2010.

If that is true, how will billions spent on a homebuyer credit stop the slide in home prices? We are not even talking about foreclosures here or the millions of additional homeless.

> raising the homebuyers tax credit to $15,000 and applying it to all homebuyers

Yes, that is good, no restrictions. Let homewoner A buy from homeowner B and let them get 15000 each. Homeowner A (now with a different house) should be allowed repeat the trade (no restrictions!) with homeowner C. That is as close as we could get to distributing money by helicopters, and Bernanke could be happy. And only homeowners profit from this, which is only just, considering the terrible slide of their houses' values they were forced to see in the last years.

Of course anything to keep prices high helps the realtors. The government should back off from these programs and let the correction happen and the bubble burst. Anybody read about the homebuyers tax credit fraud being discovered.

The NAR doesn't want to make money. No seriously. They don't. Because if they did they would follow the wisdom of any first year economics class, and encourage price reduction to meet demand.

As we all know, lower price = stronger demand = higher deal flow = more realtor revenues.

Since they clearly aren't halfwit, uneducated, bleached blonde, cheeseball morons (and they obviously know what a supply demand chart looks like), one must assume that they have a powerful desire to drive sales volume down, bankrupt their organization and to 'not make money'.

I'm not entirely sure why the Realtors are pursuing this goal, but they are proving extraordinarly successful at achieving it.

Who cares what the NAR has to say? They are nothing but liers without a securities license.

Heres the thing. First off what do you need a Realtor for? The only thing they have going for them is the database of houses they have. That you can not look at. You can't list your house on there. Nor can you browse houses on there.

They have limited browsing. Of course for you. The kind you would find in some throw away paper at the supermarket. Thats it. Otherwise they drive up to you house scare all the dogs in the neighborhood and tell you to open your drapes to let in the morning sun. They write up a contract is so simple Rocky the Squirrel can understand it.

Thats all they do and get 3 to 6% of your sales price in there pocket and you know what they aren't limited to that either. For doing basically nothing. List your house on the MLS. Tell you to paint your bathroom. Write up a contract. Is that worth say 12k on a 200k sale? Oh yes the bathroom then the kitchen. Real information

The NAR (National Association of Realtors). Continually puts out sales figures that appear to be government figures. Which are really figures to generate sales. Brokers have to pay dues to belong to that group. I half-way trust the government figures. Case-shiller and Reality Trac (another real estate entity. At least Realty Trac reports some of the real news. That is mostly for themselves however. They include a lot of curve balls. Have there own best interests at heart. I think the government needs to do all the reporting on this for honest figures. The other groups use fraudulent reporting.

If you think oh so what the numbers are fun. Think about the poor sap that goes out and buys a house. In a reverse equity market. Who's house may be worth 20% less in 2 months. I think some of these people should go to jail for fraud. Or at the very least be sued.

Real estate agents are there for us to use them....they don't really know much about anything. Just use them like they are meant to and give them 1% the most for their commision.

Why not buy a house in the middle of Louisiana in the woods for like 25K and claim homestead, and pay 25 bucks a year in property tax, and then you can go down to New Orleans, drink a hurricane on Burbon St., and listen to some cool blues, and forget all this mess. Plus...you can get one of those riding mowers from troy built.

Of course the Federal Government is going to do anything possible to prevent the continued decline of housing prices. Remember the hundreds of billions of dollars "worth" of RE mortgage backed securities? The real game of the government is to try to deal with the aftermath of the implosion of the value of these securities and the many TRILLIONS of dollars "worth" of their derivatives worldwide. The Fed's finger in the dike is getting tired yet the problem, about which little is heard anymore, still remains boiling in the background. The financial crisis has been postponed but surely not solved. Hang on tightly as the inevitable train wreck resumes.

Hate to say this my corrupt, war criminal yanqui friends (well actually, maybe not) but Osama Bin Laden WINS, and YOU lose. Big time.

GAME OVER!