It is hard to be enthusiastic about the economy's prospects when house prices are falling: Households spend less, small business owners can't use homes as collateral for loans and local governments are forced to cut jobs and programs as property-tax revenue disappears.

A home is still the biggest asset that most Americans own.

The most important point is, in a time of crisis, there is no way out but for the government to be bold and aggressive.

Buying a home wouldn't make much sense if house prices were likely to decline further; no one wants to catch a falling knife.

Too-easy credit and millions of bad loans made during the U.S. housing bubble paved the way for the financial calamity and Great Recession that followed. Today, by contrast, credit is too tight. Mortgage loans are particularly hard to get, creating a problem for the housing market and the broader economy.

They called me the sexiest economist in America, and that was years ago, when I had hair and body mass and my teeth were shiny.

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.