The current level of the Case Shiller Home Price Index is 152.48 and the mean level is 127.51.
About 140 on the index looks like the historical high water mark beyond which housing appears to be in a bubble, meaning we are in one.
Given the scale of the recent extreme housing bubble, housing should not have been prevented from correcting fully, probably well below 120, in order to reset the market on a surer basis. That might have prevented the current escalation in prices, which are unaffordable to almost everyone beneath upper middle class income levels of around $76,000.
Recent tirades against income inequality forget that the bottom half of the population typically has most of what wealth it has tied up in housing and is not well diversified. Loss of homes and home equity have been major drivers of income inequality under Barack Obama, compounded by loss of employment and housing policy inattention, even as stock markets have been driven higher by nominally positive policy through Obama's Federal Reserve chairs.
Obama sent money, after all, to Aunt Zeituni's family to help with her funeral, but he did not attend, and went golfing instead.
