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>> like Japans 10 years of deflationary stagnation

I’m glad you brought that up.

That IMO was *worse* than we’ll have if we just let the chips fall here, and let the market punish the greedy and stupid as they deserve to be punished.

Nevertheless — I don’t recall any big hyperbolic “Toll Of Human Suffering” in Japan.

By the way — during that period of time I was on the executive staff of a company that had a subsidiary in Japan. I traveled to Japan many times during that period. It was a sobering time coming on the heels of the Japanese “party experience”. But all the dire things you predict DID NOT come to pass.

And, guess what? They have come out of it, arguably stronger.

One more comment: Million-five cardboard Wal-Mart McMansion “housing” in places like Stockton and Las Vegas and San Diego is no more “worth” the prices it attained during the drunken party than dot-com “companies” with no “products” were worth their share price in 1999.

The success of this whole bailout boondoggle is predicated on somehow “saving” the inflated housing market — i.e. keeping those prices at their stupidly inflated values.

Housing price does NOT equal housing value. The market determines value. The market says housing needs to deflate, and the market is right.

If one bought stupid or used one’s house as an ATM machine, then they screwed up! Let the chips fall.