Dr. Mike Walden, North Carolina Cooperative Extension economist in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at N.C. State University, responds:

"Actually, we're not. We have seen this decline in housing prices worldwide, which leads some economists so say that the reason for this is probably some worldwide issue, which we'll get to in a moment. But in fact, we've actually seen housing prices go down at a much greater rate in many countries other than the U.S. Denmark, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Spain and Canada, they've all had recently bigger declines in housing prices than has the U.S. Now again, what this indicates is there may be something worldwide going on unrelated to a country's particular institutions and regulations and so forth. One fact that economists point to is the worldwide savings glut that occurred this decade, primarily due to savings coming out of developing countries like China. Much of that money eventually went into housing, bid up the prices of houses to unsustainable levels, and we're now on the downside of that. The housing bubble has burst. So this has been a worldwide phenomenon where you see housing prices pulling back virtually everywhere in the world."