Maybe, but that is difficult when a) the "investors" are split between connected, powerful people who really don't want to see their investments go negative; an

Maybe, but that is difficult when a) the "investors" are split between connected, powerful people who really don't want to see their investments go negative; and families just getting started who could be utterly ruined by an underwater mortgage, and b) the fact that the housing situation is a crisis now; there isn't time to faff around and hope that ten to twenty years the invisible hand of the market does this or that.