Today, Bloomberg provided the most disturbing scenario yet for the US housing market, suggesting that as many as 1.5 million Americans might lose their homes to foreclosure, a 100,000 housing related jobs could disappear and that as many as 100 subprime lenders might go into bankruptcy.

Certainly, the latter prediction is well on its way to becoming a reality. So far, around 33 subprime mortgage brokers have ceased trading. The foreclosure rate is also on a rocket-like trajectory. As for job losses, there does seem to be rather a lot of idle and under-employed realtors out there.