Reply #33: I agree with you....

[sendero]

... I've lived here for a long time. Dallas is utterly INFECTED with the $500-a-week millionaire syndrome. Folks here are caught up in looking prosperous whether they are or not in a very big way.

I didn't think the "bubble" would hit here - and frankly what is happening here really isn't a "bubble bursting" because we never had crazy house-price inflation here.

What we did have was folks buying houses too big for their income, using risky mortgage instruments (getting an ARM when rates are at historic lows is the height of financial mismanagement) and a generally soft economy.

The scary thing is that this could really snowball. A correction to sanity in the housing markets would be an overall good thing, a general collapse would be disastrous.