We will rebound and come back even stronger. Good Real estate is "good Real Estate". Bad is Bad.
People will always buy and sell "good" real estate. People will always lose on "bad" real estate. The past couple of years show that people made huge amounts of money with "Bad" real estate investments. We are in the process of having it correct itself. After that we will come back even stronger. Ben Bernanke is is one of the smartest men in the world. Listen to him, before you listen to some fruitcake on your boob tube, or some rubber neck's newspaper column. Cheers.

Paul Bravo, Isn't it always the fault of those Greedy People that have more than you do? the market will correct itself, if the house is above your head and you dont like the heighborhood, then dont buy it! Its that simple, pretty soon the price comes down.

IT IS THE FAULT OF VERY GREEDY SELLERS,
REALTORS, BANKS. THE QUALIFIED BUYERS CAN NOT BUY NOW BECAUSE THE HOUSES ARE SO RIDICULOUSLY PRICE. HOW DO YOU JUSTIFY A HOUSE IN A MIDDLE CLASS NEIGHBORHOOD WITH A PRICE TAG OF $550,000 THEY ARE NOT EVEN NICE HOUSES. THIS HOME ARE NORMALLY $225,000 THEY DOUBLED IN LESS THAN FOUR YEARS.

What do you do? My mother lost her sight six years ago and came to live with me. She is feeble and age 98 year old. She doesn't want to go to a nursing home, so I am her primary Caretaker. I do not have enough money to take care of the mortgage. I am just paying the bills to maintain things that we need.
My mortgage is threating foreclosue. What do you do? I refinanced with a subprime lender. We have used to money topay the mortgage to this point. Open for suggestions!

Bush just doesn't want to help the common man. I think it is more of Bush's ability to do something than Bernanke. It is just a darn shame. - Steve http://www.turtlewealth.com

INDIVIDUALS SHOULD NOT BE PROTECTED FROM THEIR BAD DECISIONS - BUT BANKS SHOULD BE? PUNISH THE VICTIM BUT NOT THE CROOK? HUH?

Sub prime means exactly that; lending money to an individual who really isn't qualified to reliably make payments on time. Bailing out either the greedy lender or stupid borrower hurts all who behave reponsibly. Isn't that what capitalism is all about?

WHEN SOMEONE BUYS A HOME IT IS VERY IMPORTANT AND PERSONAL.IF THEY BECOME BOGGED DOWN AND CAN'T PAY THEIR MORTGAGES FOR A TIME. THEY SHOULD BE HELPED.IF AMERICA CAN SEND MILLIONS AND MILLIONS TO EVERY OTHER COUNTRY IN THE WORLD, WHY NOT HELP SOMEONE WHO IS IN TROUBLE.ALOT OF PEOPLE SAY NO, BUT THEY NEVER KNOW WHEN SICKNESS OR A REVERSAL OF FORTUNE
WILL STRIKE THEM.

Agree with Bill, its not only greedy people's fault. there are many factors to make this subprime market crush. when people make bad decision, just a credit debt can ruin your life already. some how the agressive debt collection act, kill those subprime mortgage holder as well. the debt collection judgement are too agreesive lately, once its go to judgement they frezze your checking account, borrower must come up thousands dollars to pay their collection debt, which may cause their mortgage late payment, once late payment record find, they cannot refinance their mortgage back to good credit lender in the future. Goverment try to fix the nationwide debt problems, but its part of it cause the subprime market crush. I am worry about even after foreclosue, these ex-home owner can't rent a place to live, due to their bad credit history.

Take out Aflac policy!

Homes are products that people build and sell. Homes are different than other products because homes are the only products that never depreciate . That is why we have home flippers who went to any home and fix it up with a lot of money and thinking that they can still make money when selling them. That is not how most businesses do. They watch at cost, time, quality, and stuff when building products. Home flippers think they are business people but they dont know much about the competitiveness. A few home flippers got out lucky but the rest are in over their heads. For example, take big miners...do you know that the managements already measure the grade of the ores and decide which one to mine first and save the rest for later. They make plans so that they wont have to lose money doing it. Yeah we have big home builders but they are much more sophiscated than mom and pop home flippers who dont know what the heck they are doing as long as home prices are climbing and they dont give it a damn. They are caught flatfooted.

“When you see a house in your neighborhood that sold for $120,000 two years ago and now it is $260,000 that kind of jump cannot be sustained when, in all reality, it is still a $120,000 house, .It's over! It's over for the overpriced market, and all the good days for those house speculators. Unload them if you still can. Greenspan's low interest rate policy has created this monster, and sooner or later, a lot of people are going to pay for it. If people still believe house price can only go up, or even if they drop, they will come right back? Go check out what happened in Japan and Hong Kong in the 90s.”

“This is the worst run up in home prices I have ever seen or read, with absolutely no basis to the underlying fundamentals, and just pure speculative forces at work. Even more outrageous is the advantage the financing companies have taken of pitching Home Equity Loans to American families--which was probably the last hidden "savings account" for a rainy day for a good majority of the families. The outcome of selling over-priced homes, designers loans (ARM's, interest only ARM's etc.) and squeezing out the last bit of savings by selling home equity loans, is going to be disastrous in the coming years. (Add this to the national per capita debt and national deficit figures and you have a perfect storm in the making). Even more surprising to me is how come nobody in America sees this coming? Are we that stupid?

California #1 in foreclosures, Florida #2 and climbing.
Over 11 mortgage companies in bankruptcy, thousands of employees out of work.

For the past two years we were in a housing recession.

Next year late into 2008 this country will go into a housing depression. This same scenario will happen in England.

Here is my suggestion to the bum house market. First, adjust all property taxes to reflect more accurate home prices and re-write new sales contracts on the bad loans only. Refund and or adjust overpaid taxes and house payments on mortgage loans sold in the past 4 years. Any previous loans sold should get price adjustments and refunds but only to original owners and limited to payments only. No refund on taxes. The new payments should easily be more affordable at about 40-50% less the current levels. Write a contract law that prohibits buyin/selling homes at inflated or at 'sub-prime' prices.

Ain't it nice for Bernanke to point out the mistakes of all those investors whose only mistake was believing that they were getting a chance at sharing in the American dream of owning a home. How about all the mistakes the Fed has made over the years when fighting inflation fears with higher interest rates. We obviousley don't remember the end of the 70's decade when Volker had the short term rates over 20% and almost put the nation into a depression. And along came Ronald Reagan who reversed the Fed
insanity and brought prosperity back to America. And then came Alan Greenspan who turned the FMOC into
a mystic circus-act that had the blind sheep holding their breaths until 'Allan the Magnificent'revealed
the results of his Latest FMOC meeting. And when Alan thought that investors were getting too much of the pie, he uttered the magic words
"irrational exhuberance",and took 7 trillion dollars out of the economy. What a price to pay for ignorance.
Where is all the math and science in this Fed madness? Sadly, there isn't any. But yet we continue to accept the notion that the Federal Reserve predicates its actions on solid scientifis analysis when nothing could be farther from the truth. Anybody who believes that higher interest will bring down the price of crude (the prime-mover for our present inflationary spike),might want to check with the tooth-
fairy for advise. It's time that the shackles of high interest rates are removed from the poor and middle-class,who pay them,by challenging the policies of the Fed and its FMOC with a scintific blue -ribbon committee of the finest minds in America. It's time that the usurious nature of our entire interest rate
mechanism is recognized as to its unfairness to those who have to pay them. And a good beginning would be to give control of Monetary policy back to the U.S. Treasury where it belongs. And with an oversight committee that is educated in the math and science necessary to protect the economy and those who have to pay interest. Especially, mortgages and credit cards.

John, as I recall, inflation was a real problem in the 70's. Volker was Reagan's man and told him that we would have to pay a stiff price to get inflation under control. And he did get inflation under control. We have had housing inflation and I think we will have to pay a price for that too.

This is for AISLEYALEX.

Why should the government help those who have trouble making their payments on time? Why not just have the government buy our homes? Are you going to expand that thinking to make a case that the government should pay the medical costs for the millions of smokers who get sick each year?

Many people have said it: But a reasonably priced home, with a decent downpayment, and stop trying to keep up with the Jones'. It's really simple.

If I see you bought a new car (with no $ down, and you're upside down driving off the lot), I think I need one. So, I buy one. Then, everybody else does. This is the kind of behavior that makes people late on their mortgages when the payments reset.

Live well, but reasonably. Control your budget and debt. It's MY responsibility to pay MY bills. Not yours, through our government and your taxes.

Come on! People have to buy bigger and more. Frankly, lets get back to basic reality. You dont need these mini mainsions that have been sprining up everywhere. We had 7 people in a 4 br 2 bath ranch. None of us felt overcrowded. Nor did we need extra spce. My dad and my mom worked and we paid our bills. So if these people had bought what they needed not what they wanted I doubt we would have quite the mess.