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

"I think it's actually very straight forward. It's the drop in housing prices. We haven't seen the kind of drop in housing prices nationwide in this country since the nineteen teens, not even during the 1930s . . . but actually the nineteen teens. And not only has this hurt homeowners who are trying to sell their homes, but it's actually also hurt people who, perhaps, had no intention of selling but who had been accessing the equity in their homes - that is, the value of their home that they actually own over and above the mortgage - and using that to fuel spending. In fact, during some earlier years of this decade, homeowners were tapping their homes to the tune of $600 billion a year to help finance spending. Well, that's stopped now because home values are going down. Of course, the other big problem with falling home values is that it has hurt the banks. Banks that hold the mortgage to most homes now find that the collateral - that's actually the home - is worth less in many cases than the value of that mortgage note. And that's really the essential reason we've had problems with the banking system. So this recession really is ultimately tied to the housing market, ultimately tied to the drop in housing prices. That needs to stop before this economy gets better."