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

Investor demand for distressed property has been healthy, as rents rise to levels that can cover investors' costs while they wait for properties to appreciate. Giving investors a small tax break should further juice up demand, supporting prices for distressed homes and the market in general.

There is no better way to quickly buoy hard-pressed homeowners than helping them take advantage of the currently record low fixed mortgage rates and significantly reduce their monthly mortgage payments.

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.

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

Our biggest challenge is to eliminate the popular perception that economists don't have anything useful to say.

Global central banks are working hard to lift their economies through an aggressively easy monetary policy. The ECB [European Central Bank] and BOJ [Bank of Japan] are buying tens of billions of bonds and other financial securities each month in an effort to stimulate their economies, which is pushing down rates everywhere, including in the U.S.