How to Help the Housing Market Recover

How hard is this?

Would anyone like a recipe for restoring home prices or any other form of real estate?

Which people need government help?

It seems like our government keeps trying to bail out the helpless. In some cases, this is okay. On an individual level, we all need a lift now and then. I am pretty sure that most government aid programs INITIALLY intended to target those people with mostly good habits who happen to crash into a big pile of bad luck.

Okay...Let's give them a hand so that they get on their feet and return to being productive.

However, there are many other people who see these other people benefiting, and they suddenly feel entitled to "their share."

Politically, I get that there are some people beyond help who will behave better for the entire population if we "give" them enough to survive. Otherwise, many of these people will turn to more aggressive types of activity that will likely cost us more than we're paying them.

Here you go! Here is your "free" handout. Essentially, this is a bribe for these people to mostly behave themselves.

Both of these groups are worth helping for different reasons, and they are not part of my "recipe" for real estate recovery. The recipe does not involve throwing good money after bad.

Looks like I was wrong! Dow is over 11,000.

In a previous post, I mentioned that we should look out for the neighborhood bear. I said that the stock market acts like our economy has arrived.

Even though, there are a lot of good things in place, it's still missing some things that will take time to develop. Namely, we still need to get banks comfortable enough to gives lines of credit to businesses that will create jobs. We're going in this direction, but things haven't been in place long enough to this "new money" to filter its way through the economy, yet.

So I said to look out for the neighborhood bear.

Since that day, the stock market has gone mostly....UP. That's right! Up.

We just broke 11,000 today, and it seems like there isn't any bear in sight. Everyone and their brother (including me) figures that we are long overdue for a market dip. It hasn't happened, and it's not clear that it will.

I'm confused--officially.

Be careful of bubbles forming.