Real estate market at double-dip levels

Remember when newly elected President Obama, with Democrats in full control of the government , were going to use their compassionate and virtuous liberal ways to reverse the housing crisis? 

Yeah, me too:

With foreclosures high and demand weak, home prices in a majority of the nation’s largest metropolitan areas posted fresh lows in December and pushed a widely watched index of real estate values close to a double-dip decline.

The Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller Index showed that prices in 20 major U.S. cities dropped an average of 2.4% in December from the same month a year earlier and 1% from November, the fifth straight month the index has fallen.

And experts said things could get worse.

“My intuition rates the probability of another 15%, 20%, even 25% real home price decline as substantial,” said Yale University economics professor Robert Shiller, co-creator of the index. “That is not a forecast, but it is a substantial risk.”

[…]

A recovery in housing prices seemed to be on track last year. But that improvement was fueled by federal home-buying tax credits that expired last summer, analysts said.

Without a stimulus, prices began to fall again. 

Is anyone willing to stand up and admit that big government solutions to just about anything are a complete waste of time?  Unfortunately for Democrats, the reality-based laws of economics don’t care about utopian fantasies.