More signs the US housing market is in trouble - major US lender cuts 5% of its workforce:

http://www.advfn.com/news_Lender-Countrywide-to-cut-2-500-jobs_17386109.html

Oil has done for the US housing bubble - question is will the Fed be able to ride to the rescue and cut rates early next year before the damage gets too bad?

Exactly. In the late winter of 2001 in late afternoon, I was driving on a state highway in the NW Catskills sensibly trailing another car which was behind two milk tankers following each other. A deer ran down an embankment toward the first, missed it, dove between the two and landed on its knees in front of oncoming traffic, got up and jumped out of the way of an oncoming Jeep Cherokee and off the road. Seconds and hundreds of yards later, the 2 tankers, the fellow in front of me and I were going 20mph without anyone ever touching their brakes.Some lucky s.o.bs., the deer and the four of us, and the oncoming traffic. When you can, you don't deny it.

Did you ever think about how we each trust thousands of strangers to not cross that thin yellow line of paint every day?

Those strangers are the ones we call "oncoming traffic".

Those strangers include X% who are drunk or drugged out of their minds, or worse yet, reaching under their dashboard for a dropped ham sandwich just as your car approaches from across the yellow line.

(That last guy near killed me.)

(Warning: Oil CEO, Do NOT, repeat NOT, click on this picture. It may distract you and cause a pile up. Always look away,away from oncoming and wayward traffic.)

Damn straight.  It took me a few years to embrace it before I got rid of the last dangerous hormonal pangs of ohshitI'mgonnadie, but denial is a wonderful river, and it makes for wonderful waterfront property.