The truth of the matter is that the actual losses in housing are too small to cause any serious damage to the economy in a static world.  What we should be concerned about -- and really even this is a small concern long-term -- is the crash resulting in a contraction from people who really don't need to put a stop to their typical consumer routine, but who, in doing so, drag many others down.  The large majority of people who have been reasonably responsible, financially, during the credit flood.

What I find incredibly offensive in the press is the view that this is important because of the large number of people sucked in on it.  If a person lost her home at another time, -- as you mentioned, hundreds of thousands do every year -- the press wouldn't give a shit, and Washington would go on fighting about some other meaningless issue.  Lose your home in good times, and you're shit-out-of-luck.

And let's be clear:  These are millions of people who owned and lost, while 30% of the country can't own.  It only gets the attention of the powerbrokers when the upper-middle class is affected.  I'm a little -- okay, a lot -- tired of the pandering to that spoiled group, anyway, since they dominate our lives, but, with their idiocy now fully on display, I find this level of pandering disgusting.  And they'll get a bailout from the rest of us who have the sense to see the crash and wait.

Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin