This housing debacle isn't going away anytime soon: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35832152/ns/business-washington_post Foreclosures are the price killer in a neighborhood.
Obama needs to get serious about the job situation in this country. That's the only thing that is going to make a difference. He's mismanged this whole healthcare reform situation so badly and it's dragged out so long that he took his eye off the ball in the most critical area of the economy. Hopefully in Nov the voters will deliver him a stern rebuke even more so than they did Clinton in 1994.
I agree that unemployment is issue #1.......but healthcare reform is a strong #2. The housing market can have a chance to rebound if people are working and they aren't being ripped off constantly by the healthcare system. For now the financial industry has been policed a little and they can't blatantly rob the general public as before.
We've had strong housing markets when the people were being "ripped off" by the Healthcare industry. But we've never had a strong housing market when people didn't have jobs. Healthcare is a distant 2nd to Jobs.
Healthcare has increasingly become a rip-off over the past decade. It was a more affordable necessity prior to 2000. People avoid going to medical providers because they can't afford it. However....that said.....I agree once again that jobs creation is numero uno.
It's hard to afford health insurance or health care services if you don't have a job. As long as Obama can keep folks unemployed and uninsured they'll be cheering him on as he rants about the insurance companies. Meanwhile stats show that the most denied claims in the country are by Medicare and the VA. That's right, the government run health system denies more claims than the evil insurance companies. So it's only logical to do away with private insurance for the public option.
Freeze government spending. Cut taxes across the board. Extend the Bush tax cuts. If you don't, we aren't coming back. Period.