From the Worthy Intellectual Wharton Magazine:
Equally troubling is the number of homeowners underwater, with mortgage loans that exceed the value of their property, which ticked up to 23.2 percent, meaning nearly 14 million U.S. homes have negative equity””a statistic unlikely to shore up home values. All of this has economists, politicians and the American people wondering how much longer the country will remain mired in the housing mess, and how we can pull ourselves out without sliding into the no-growth economy of 1990s Japan.