File this under car wreck, as in, you don't really want to see it, but you cannot look away. I'm talking about the latest batch of housing numbers. They all show pretty much the same thing: sales slacking off, inventories rising.

Builders like Toll Bros. are saying they've never seen anything so bad in, oh, half a century. Builders, of course, aren't the only companies to see their stocks get whacked. Lenders like Accredited Home Lenders and Countrywide Financial have been hammered, as has H&R Block, which announced one of what I suspect will be many charges for bad loans. Oh hey, and put First Horizon into the group that's hurting for lack of lending.

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The home 'investment' industry
I'm sure others have noticed, as I have, the increasingly desperate pleas from the housing-bubble cheerleaders, especially National Association of Realtors Chief Economist David Lereah. A longtime bubble denier — who, I think, is more interested in protecting his constituency of six-percenters than in offering realistic housing-market commentary — Lereah began asking the Fed to protect his bubble a couple months back. At the same time, he and his associates have tried to spin the situation with the news media, who, hungry for soundbites, are usually all too happy to parrot headlines such as "Existing-home sales down with softening prices."

That's the title of the latest "no reason for fear" release, which you can find here. You can see, especially in the remarks toward the bottom, the NAR's devotion to trying to convince Americans that housing is a no-lose "investment."

That doesn't quite square with the soundbite available via a Bloomberg story on the numbers. There, Lereah reportedly said, "It's very important that the Fed understand the fragile state of the housing market. It's very important that the Fed maintain the status quo, keep rates where they are."

Translation: "Pleeeez Gawwwd don't take away their free money! Do that and we're all sunk!"

If it's disconcerting that the most prominent housing bulls are, when we're not looking, begging for economic policies aimed at shoring up their crumbling story, then this might be much worse.

How about if the last shred of the housing bull story turned out to be — how do you say? Untrue?

Wait, what did that house sell for?
You've probably heard it repeated all over the news. Sure, housing sales are down and inventories are up, but so are prices? You might even wonder how that squares with reality if you, as I do, note the number of street signs sporting add-on boards declaring "new price."

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It turns out that the anecdotal evidence for falling prices may be exactly right, because a large number of housing sale prices may be based on fudged numbers.

That's right, the last leg of Greenspan's bubble may be collapsing under the weight of farcical accounting — trickery that would get you tossed in jail if you tried it at an American corporation.

Many economists and commentators have begun to point out that housing prices are inflated to an unknown degree by seller concessions: rebates on closing costs, swimming pools, new kitchen countertops, luxury trips once a year for life and other goodies detailed in a recent New York Times article. These and other expensive sweeteners are now par for the course as desperate sellers try anything to move their houses.

CONTINUED : Harrowing tales from the front

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