
Everyone is focused on making house prices go up. Banks need higher house prices to recover the capital they put into trillions of dollars of toxic mortgages. Loan owners need house prices to go up to avoid damaged credit from a short sale or foreclosure. Home owners want to see house prices go up to feel rich. And politicians need to see rising house prices to keep everyone happy and get reelected. Economists also play the game by promoting the "wealth effect" of housing. By cloaking what's really going on with a comfortable euphemism, it becomes easy to ignore the fact we are really talking about Ponzi borrowing inevitably leading to bubbles and severe recessions when the Ponzi scheme unravels.…[READ MORE]