The stock market is now down about 50% from its recent highs. The stock market decline is supposed to be an effect of the housing market bust. Meanwhile, the prices of houses, which are much less liquid and slower to adjust, are only down about 25% from their highs.
This would indicate to me, even allowing for the fact that panic enters the stock market much more quickly than the less liquid housing market, that the worst is yet to come for housing.
I'm not pleased about a big 3 auto bailout, but if they go under, I think it might the tipping point that takes the US into something like a depression, certainly a serious, long recession. The old Mel Gibson Mad Max movies will in actuality take place in post-depression Michigan and Ohio, rather than in post-war Australia. But Congress says, we don't care; Honda, Toyota, BMW, VW and Mercedes will take good care of us. World War II is finally over, and the Axis won. Alabama's Sen. Richard Shelby is waving the white flag as hard has he can to help all those Japanese and German auto plants in Alabama.
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