When Europeans first came to this continent, that was the original American Dream. There were not fancy homes here - there were huts and teepees. The pilgrims and other original settlers were coming for opportunity, not housing. Somehow, along the way, the American Dream has become synonymous with home ownership and that is a shame.

Is this the land of opportunity or the land of homes? It’s extremely troubling to hear our political “leaders” and financial gurus suggesting that the economy and markets will not recover until we fix the housing and mortgage problem. They might be right about that. But it is ridiculous that it ever was allowed to get to that point. Our society found it so damn easy to substitute opportunities for good manufacturing jobs to create wealth in exchange for opportunities for a good house that could create artificial wealth with cheap debt and inflated prices.

If and when the housing market bottoms, will opportunities abound? The American Dream needs to be a lot more than what house, hut or teepee we live in.