[quote=sdrealtor]The answer is Uncle Sam. The gov’t wants to keep people in their homes and keep the economy growing. The folks waiting for values to drop so they can get what they think they deserve are in the minority. A couple years back you all said there was no way the gov’t couldnt stop a complete collapse of housing. I said watch them. Its pretty clear they have and there is no signs they will stop.[/quote]

I keep rereading that sentence about the government, and I’m not sure I know what you’re saying. (the double negative has my head going in circles.) But for now, i’m going to assume that I was right on my first go thru, and that you thought the government would stop a complete collapse. And that they were successful.

I think you’re wrong. They weren’t successful. There was a complete collapse of housing prices. There was a complete collapse the housing industry. Most of the country is back to pre-bubble prices. That’s a collapse. Of course it could have been worse. And however feeble, ill intentioned, badly designed and poorly executed the various government policies have been, it wasn’t worse. They helped, but did not prevent a collapse. Particularly maintaining the low interest rates. Because those that said there is nothing the government could do (to prevent a collapse) were right. (I guess you could argue it wasn’t a complete collapse. Housing values didn’t drop to zero.)

Some economists might argue that government intervention had nothing to do with it, it was simply economic ergodicity at work. But not subscribing to that whole market equilibrium theory (mostly because it just can’t be measured, because in the macro world, there is no such thing as a market absent outside influence), it’s difficult to argue that intervention had no effect. Impossible to accurately measure, but government action did provide some brake, but didn’t prevent a collapse.