My wife and I just bought our first home. We, separately, come from the bottom of the world. Colette was divorced and abandoned with 3 children to care for and no help, she stumbled from day to day working 2 and 3 low wage (...Tell me again why low wages are good for the economy....[?]...) jobs keeping her head held high as the church evicted her from her home (with her kids). I, just before meeting my wife was living in a corn field (about a week) after having to leave the friends home I was living in as a result of a complete collapse of the business that we where trying to get off the ground (He has 6 children, and yes, they lost their home too....). That was three years ago. Last night we finalized the deal to buy a 3 bedroom row home with a finished basement, fully furnished(!). Its not that you can't pull out of the massive gravitational pull of the blackhole of human ruin, you can. Its just that people keep being pushed off the edge in the first place and little or no real help is given to catch them. This is why we fail to break 12,000 on the dow. This is why economic expansions will ALWAYS fail. As soon as we "get it" we will conquer the stars, until then, we will crawl and fall. Period.