But a lot do and those that work for banks that are TARP recipients may be facing a bonus deficit for the next few years, according to the WSJ. There was a flurry of showing activity the past two weeks as bonus checks for 2008 were handed out. If those lookers fear that they won’t see a similar check for a long time, our spring market may be still born. That will open up a lot of properties to other people, but I doubt sellers will be thrilled. Still, I think I agree with this law professor:
“I’ve been a big free-market guy, but with the free market you get what you deserve, and the foxes have been guarding the henhouse,” said Jonathan Macey, a law professor at Yale University. The way that bonuses were doled out was “corrupted” because it “morphed into an expectation” instead of a reward for performance, he said. “That’s not credible anymore.”
No, it’s not. We’re about to experience a paradigm shift; always an interesting thing to live through.
For What It's Worth 
Wall Street will NOT exist the way it has in the past. I’m surprised it is taking as long as it is for most folks figure this out… The government has made significant investments in nearly every financial institute of importance. This leads to much more scrutiny and certainly much more control… This will ultimately be a very good thing down the road – the excessive greed has created most of what we’re dealing with and hard times certainly has a way of humbling even the wealthiest of people… Real estate – especially inflated real estate – has so much more room to correct. Folks can fight this all they want but ultimately they will have to accept reality – and that is a minimum of a 30% correction from here. Those waiting for stability and a move higher in the real estate space will be waiting a decade a minimum… Middle America will see some stability over the nxt 2 years but we still need to see our correction (one that really hurts) and then from there it will be quite some time before we see the prices of today again… Good luck and pay attention – this is not your typical recession…