President Bill Clinton once described homes as something Americans "will always know that their country wanted them to have because they were entitled to it as part of the American dream".t's how the 42nd president ended an address in The White House extolling the virtues of homeownership. He gave the speech in 1995, a year like most before it and several since, when US politicians were more than happy to talk about the housing market.
Fast forward 16 years and the relative silence is striking. More than three years since the collapse of Bear Stearns – a bank that choked on mortgage debt – the only financial debate in the capital is how to cut the country's $14 trillion (8.6 trillion) debt.
Meanwhile on Wall Street, the housing market has become the D-list celebrity of financial markets. It has to do something really shocking to get attention. The steepest quarterly drop in house prices since the three shuddering months after Lehman Brothers' demise certainly isn't enough. US stock markets didn't blink at Monday's news that average prices fell 3pc in the first three months of this year. Nor that only three of the 132 metropolitan areas escaped the declines, according to Zillow, a major property listings website. (read more)
