any homes 'using credit cards to pay mortgage'

[RichardCranium]

Has anyone ever found a way of gently deflating a bubble?

If you put a bit of Sellotape on a balloon you can pierce it with a pin and it goes down slowly.

Maybe there's a way with bubbles, and economies.

[Tarquin Farquhar]

Anyone who spends more than they earn should be in deep trouble. Yet somehow it has become not only acceptable but seen as helping the economy.

I think the present case is not of people consistently trying to spend more than they earn, but rather of people finding out that even if you were prepared to downsize the accommodation to suit the downsized income, 2009 was hell and gone from being a good time to sell up. Better to hang on to the house for the recovery, at any price.

[AtW]

Has anyone ever found a way of gently deflating a bubble?

It's possible, but it is necessary to WANT deflating the baloon in the first place: hands up who wants value of his house to drop 50%+ to reach anything near fair value (tm)?