Job-creation plan largely ignores housing woes

More than four years after the sector's initial collapse, housing has become the economy's silent killer. But Obama, in unveiling his proposed $447-billion package, said little more on the issue than that he would help 'responsible homeowners' refinance their mortgages.

President Obama's new jobs-creation plan all but ignores what many economists see as the single biggest problem in the stalling economy: the continuing depression in the housing market.

Home sales, prices and construction have been bad and have been getting worse for so long that Washington and many Americans have grown numb to the problem.

But dig below the surface and housing turns out to be a root cause of many of the other problems that are getting more attention — including the high level of unemployment that Obama focused on in his speech Thursday to Congress.

"That's probably the biggest missing ingredient here," economist Mark Zandi said after reviewing Obama's proposed $447-billion package of tax cuts and infrastructure spending. 

Source: LA Times