The news from the US housing market remains pretty bleak three years after the financial crisis began. Last week, we read that attorneys general from all 50 states were investigating allegations that some major banks inappropriately reviewed mortgage files and/or tendered false foreclosure statements which led to the eviction of thousands of delinquent borrowers from their homes. Apparently, banks and credit suppliers used “robo-signers” to sign false affidavits. The US federal regulators are meeting today (October 20, 2010) to discuss the “foreclosure crisis”. The question is whether this will become a bigger problem and spill over into the real economy and worsen the unemployment crisis. The governments have all the tools and capacity they need to ensure that any financial crisis is totally insulated from the real economy. But their reluctance to show the necessary policy leadership almost ensures that a financial crisis will spread and wreak havoc in the real economy. Their lack of policy action amounts to plain stupidity or malicious contempt for their citizens. Probably both.