The Economist on housing prices' effects toward recession
I found this article on The Economist's website very illuminating: enough that I went onto Amazon.com and bought two "dummy" books on economics. 
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displa ... d=10134077

http://www.economist.com/opinion/displa ... d=10134077
Comments
Basically what it shows is that we've been borrowing our way into this mess for a long time. We certainly aren't going to borrow our way out of it!