And the Great Housing Ponzi Scheme ends. Get ready for the carnage.

Another GREAT housing crash expose in the New York Times. Nice to have good writers out there doing their jobs (hint hint Catherine Reagor).

You wonder how this kind of information can be out there, and the NAR and realtors are still out there lying and spinning. It's over folks. It's all over. And with the crash of housing comes the crash of everything. Get ready.

This Is the Sound of a Bubble Bursting

Southwestern Florida is in the midst of this gathering storm. It was here that housing prices multiplied first and most exuberantly, and here that the deterioration has unfolded most rapidly. As troubles spill from real estate and construction into other areas of life, this region offers what may be a foretaste of the economic pain awaiting other parts of the country.

National home builders poured in, along with construction workers, roofers and electricians. But as a kingdom of real estate materialized, growth ultimately exceeded demand: investors were selling to one another, inflating prices. When the market figured this out in late 2005, it retreated with punishing speed.

“It was as if someone turned off the faucet,” Mr. Carey said. “It just came to a screeching halt. When it stopped, people started dumping property.”

Throughout Lee County, a sense of desperation has seized the market as speculators try to unload property or lure renters. On many lawns, a fierce battle is under way for the attention of passers-by, with “for rent” signs narrowly edging out “for sale.”

Mr. Jarrett hasn’t closed a deal in three months. He is on track to earn about $50,000 for the year, he said. Yet he needs $17,000 a month just to pay the mortgages, insurance, taxes and utility bills on his four properties — all worth less than half what he owes. Rental income brings in only about $3,500 a month.

“It started with housing, the loss of construction jobs, mortgage companies, title companies, but now it’s spread through the entire economy,” Mr. Kest says as he walks a strip of mostly empty condo towers on the riverside in downtown Fort Myers. “It now has permeated everything.”

“All the local governments were drunk with money,” says Mr. Kest, the finance professor. “Now, they’re going to have to cut back and learn how to manage.”