noriel roubinis latest, page-4

What is it with you frontier men from WA and your derision of paper shufflers? Is there a coven of John Wayne impersonators over there, with yc as president and neil as secretary? Unless you want all of us to go back to subsistance farming or even to become hunter gatherers then there is a place for the tertiary sector (so called paper shufflers) just has much as there is for the primary sector (so called yeehaa's).

A couple of points: US housing situation is much different to that in Oz. Even before the housing bust started, 1 in 40 houses in the US were vacant, with a concentration of these empty buildings being in rust belts (Detroit) and boom areas (Florida). Also recent analysis is showing that unlike in previous downturns home mortgagors are more inclined to walk away from their home loan and keep their car loan and credit cards. This breaks a fundamental long-standing premise of home lending in the US. So yes in a country of 300m people which has just had the biggest housing bubble in its history burst there are ghost towns appearing.