AlterNet
by James Howard Kunstler

01/11/06

High gasoline, heating oil and methane gas prices will absolutely kill the housing bubble for reasons I've already outlined. The production home builders will be idle, stuck with huge inventories in places that never should have been suburbanized in the first place. A lot of Americans holding 'creative' mortgages -- no money down, interest only, adjustable rate, what-have-you -- will be crushed by the expense of their obligations. Many of them will go bankrupt under new bankruptcy laws that leave no wiggle room for escaping partial repayment. Their houses will flood the real estate markets in an orgy of distress selling. ' ... With the cratering of the housing bubble, the U.S. economy has to fall on its a...

http://www.alternet.org/story/30640/


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp