The Obama administration deserves credit for quickly ending the housing free fall. In particular, Obama empowered the Federal Housing Administration to ensure that households could find mortgages at low interest rates even during the worst phase of the financial panic.

There is plenty of blame to go around for the U.S. housing bubble, but not much of it belongs to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The two giant housing-finance institutions made many mistakes over the decades, some of them real whoppers, but causing house prices to soar and then crater during the past decade weren't among them.

Yes. I don't think it would be appropriate at this point to raise taxes on anyone, certainly not in 2011.

Defaulting on the nation's debt would be cataclysmic. The U.S. Treasury's Aaa rating is the one constant in the world's financial system. When times are bad anywhere on the planet, global investors flock to Treasury bonds because they know they will get their money back.

Lenders look at potential borrowers from many angles before extending credit: How much of its income will a household need to put into debt repayment? How large is the down payment? Does the borrower have a job with a stable income? What is the borrower's credit score?

There are different flavors of recession. You can get into some pretty dark scenarios pretty quickly.

I'm a registered Democrat.