The Housing Double Dip, QE3 and Gold

America’s real estate market is all about plunging prices and anemic sales.

Some newspaper headlines: Home sales slump is widespread; Illinois plans to blow $100 million in troubled mortgage relief program; Foreclosure flood may not have crested yet; As lenders hold homes in foreclosure, sales are hurt; Priciest homes languish in Greenwich, Connecticut.

Falling home values now equate to about $1.3 trillion of lost home equity in a little over a year. If this continues, and there is no reason to believe it won’t, the result is about $2 trillion sliced out of an economy that needs several trillion dollars of new credit each year just to keep going.

Read more: The Housing Double Dip, QE3, and Gold