I’m going to attempt to reduce the explanation for the fallout in housing to a short and simple context. I will apply my patented Mikeronomics to achieve brevity.

Everyone in America, who could afford a house and still have money left to eat, bought one. This is normally referred to as “market saturation.” And, beings that houses last longer than computers, this caused a problem for all those folks that develop land, build homes, finance homes, sell homes, make stuff to build homes with…well you get the drift.

The problem that I referred to for the home construction group at the juncture when housing construction starts to fall off, is often referred to as “extended unemployment.” That is, unless more folks miraculously became qualified to own homes.

No problem, people who are unemployed don’t vote for the current administration, so low down, no down, going down, and down right dumb loans were the obvious answer to keep the real estate express on schedule. This, of course, proved a very short term plan for a very, very long term problem. Ya see, residential construction cannot be a sustainable basis for any long enduring economy. You simply run out of buyers. Even buyers for no down, low down, and down right dumb loans.

So how the heck did residential construction become the mainstay for so many people?

Now let me take a wild guess at this. Hundreds of thousands of American jobs in industry (industry is often referred to as sustainable) currently reside in China, India, South Korea, Mexico, and Timbuktu. Since employment figures show relatively low unemployment, you don’t suppose those displaced workers are somehow involved in construction do you?

What say you?