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dc_dux, "the problem" is actually exacerbated by the mindset that there is "no problem".....

We see "it"....this "mindest"....in the US stock market.....the talking heads on CNBS are going "ga ga"....this week, because the DOW (DJIA) an index of just 30 stocks, is poised to set a new "record", around 12,800....while the Nasdaq 2000 index, a measure of 2000 stocks, is trading at just half of it's march, 2000 peak valuation of 5148. The DOW index is adjusted periodically, removing "laggards".....underperforming stocks that would tend to make that index average lower than it is today. For many Americans, the Dow is the stock market, so.....
<img src="http://chart.finance.yahoo.com/c/my/_/_ixic"><br>

The major Japanese stock indes, often called the "Nikkei Dow", is today trading at less than 1/2 it's 1990 level of 39,000.....but we don't dwell on that....
<img src="http://chart.finance.yahoo.com/c/my/_/_n225">

Iraq is a fucking mess, but folks like John McCain, Joe Lieberman (described recently as Bush's <a href="http://zenhuber.blogspot.com/2007/03/bush-and-rovewellians-still-going.html">"sex toy"</a>), and president Bush, himself, all see "improvement". All I see are more avoidable, "empty chairs" at the dinner tables at too many US family gatherings....and at Iraqi tables, as well:
so....I guess that it just depends on how you react to "the news". Everybody does have to live somewhere, ace is right about that.....and it is easier to manipulate the valuations of 30 high profile stocks than it is to "goose" the valuations of a diverse group of 2000 stocks that encompass all areas of the economy and are mostly not high profile.

I'm in the school that believes that we are only in the early morning phase of the economic disaster that many, many American families are headed for...maybe it's about 2:30 am, right now. Ace maintains that the worst is over. Dc_dux, ace will view your example of the 33 number for current builder sentiment as a "tradeable bottom". So far, the Nikkei bottom from 39,000 was
7607 in 2003.....14 years after the top, and the Dow bottomed from a 1929 top of 393, to just 41 in July, 1932. The Nasdaq top was 5148 in March, 2000, and the bottom.....so far....in late 2002 was about 1100.

I see builder sentiment dropping below 10, and....since this is the biggest housing price valuation bubble and lending excess period in US history, average valuation declines of 40 and even 50 percent are certainly expected.
Indeed....in some Florida condo markets, these levels of decline have already been reached.

I hope that you were "playing" with me, in your last post, ace. I'll worry about you if you really were serious in advising me not to post on this subject, because you say the crisis is over, or never existed.....
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When I posted here:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...9&postcount=48

....back on Feb, 23....less than 2 months ago.....only 23 of these lenders had imploded.....

Now that the private sector will no longer write risky loans.....putting pressure on housing valuations due to increased foreclosures of overvalued homes, purchased by unqualified buyers with no means of maintaining ownership in a climate of falling housing valuations....along comes a GSE....the government....to the rescue. They looked scared ace.....this is not a development in a healthy market, or in a healthy economy. It smells of the government propping up housing valuations because the alternative is reality.....something that you are avoiding acknowledging, ace:
....wouldn't it be easier for the government just to give billions to some of the 59 failed lenders, while telling the market that these lenders will be guaranteed not to fail, no matter how many shitty mortgages for overvalued houses they approve for unqualified applicants?