Wall Street posted all those great profits for the past year, and will be giving bonuses again, and even if Goldman Sachs is changing its bonus system, they’re acting as if it’s still a mystery why the housing sector hasn’t improved too. As Ilargi of theautomaticearth said, The economy has to recover for the housing industry to recover, not the other way around.

So what is “the economy”?

You and your job(s) and your bank accounts, your savings, stocks and bonds, your recent purchases, your loans to friends or customers, your mortgage payments, your rent, your businesses, the money that was stolen from you or you lost on the subway, how much you buy, how much you eat, how much you throw away;
your garden which yielded you bushels of tomatoes last year, your continuing use of your food dehydrator, your long showers and water usage, your energy usage, your car use and car payments, your (lack of )pay raise, how many days you took off work, your health insurance, your out-of-pocket medical bills, your childcare fees, your taxes, your Social Security payments, your Social Security income, your Medicare, your expectations, hopes and fears for the future;

and then the same for everybody else in the U.S.

The stock market is not the economy. The housing market is not the economy. Those two things are stuff some people invest in. They represent SOME of the activities of the economy.

Everything counts, not just those big indicators the media keep talking about. The economy is personal and public.