>Imagine that you've just taken out a 40 year $500,000 mortgage. How happy are you going to be if next year your house is now worth $250,000 but you still owe $490,000 on it?

The thing is, this is exactly what happens with everything else that an American consumer purchases with a loan: cars, boats, RVs, everything that is purchased with a credit card.

As has been said before, a house is just a wooden box that you leave out in the rain for 30 years. But yet we expect that this box will become more valuable over time...