Amazing. Even the MSM is now calling this thing the "housing meltdown". Get ready for the store closings and other knock-on housing crash effects

It's playing out, just as predicted

So many knock-on effects from the "housing meltdown": Home Depot, GM, Lowes, Circuit City, Sears, Bed Bath & Beyond, Penny's, newspapers, restaurants, lenders, plastic surgeons, homebuilders, furniture retailers, google, dry cleaners, state budgets, auto dealers, ...

I bet we could name 100 industries and 10000 companies that are gonna get slaughtered as housing melts down, the housing ATM is towed away, and the crash plays out.

And we're just getting started. (Note, I shorted Home Depot on Friday even though it's manipulated)

Effects of Housing Meltdown Spread - Housing Meltdown Spreads As Companies in Myriad Industries See Lower Profits, Sales

NEW YORK (AP) -- It was supposed to be contained slump, but there's no avoiding it any more: The housing sector's woes are spreading, squeezing makers of everything from the fireplace to the kitchen sink.

The market's two-year meltdown has already claimed a number of obvious victims, from the homebuilders who overextended themselves trying to satisfy unsustainable demand, to aggressive lenders who scuttled vetting procedures to cash in on commissions -- but the recent round of earnings reports indicates the turmoil is more widespread than people first expected.

"We look at the overall (housing) market and say there's still correction that lies ahead of us," Home Depot Chief Executive Frank Blake told investors last week, as the company cut its earnings forecast for the year.

Publishers, who derive the lion's share of their revenue from advertising, joined in Thursday, saying housing's downturn led to lower real-estate advertising.

Media General Inc., publisher of the Richmond Times-Dispatch and The Tampa Tribune, said Florida's economic troubles -- due in large part to one of the most severe regional housing declines -- led to a 75 percent drop in quarterly earnings.

"Florida's economy has dramatically reversed, driven by an adjustment in the housing market following several record-breaking years," the company said in a statement.

Fleck: The game is over. Subprime helped cause the housing price bubble, and it's over. The Great Unwinding is here.

When it's over, it's really over. I'm amazed at the swiftness of the subprime implosion, and now come the spillover effects. Less housing demand (and ability to purchase). Lower housing prices. Hundreds of lenders imploding. Hundreds of thousands of REIC out of work. Stockholder and bondholder wipeouts. Hedge fund implosions. Financial market havoc.

Got popcorn? The Great Unwinding is here.

What's remarkable is that Wall Street was surprised by the implosions of lenders NovaStar Financial and New Century Financial. What we don't know is how quickly this mess will impact the economy.

Why does the stock market at large seem not to care about the many problems that exist? My best explanation is this: The stock market, which is normally thought of as a discounting mechanism, doesn't work that way at the moment.

When the market reverts to discounting and ceases to be the price-discovery animal it is today, there will be a tremendous amount of violence on the downside.

Ignorance aside, it pays to state the obvious: The subprime industry was absolutely critical to the inflating of the real-estate bubble. If loans had been made only on a responsible basis -- to people who put money down and looked like they could actually repay the money, irrespective of rising house prices -- that bubble would never have achieved anything close to the heights it did.

That game is obviously over. Let me repeat that -- over. The real-estate market of the past few years will not be seen again in our lifetimes. The only thing we don't know is at what rate this unwinding will play out across the economy and, more importantly (to me), in the minds of the Goldilocks-enthralled community on Wall Street.

"Slowly but surely, people are starting to get it, and slowly but surely, I am starting to think that the tipping point in credit -- via a subprime-generated shambles in CDO (collateralized debt obligation) land -- is closer than anybody imagines."