Going Bust

Florida contains several of the parts of the country that are worst-hit by the housing bubble, so Peter Goodman's New York Times article on Cape Coral shouldn't be taken as typical. What it is, as Jared Bernstein says, is illustrative of the broader situation. The extreme locations highlight the general sorts of things that go wrong in affected areas. It isn't this bad in most place, but it shows the direction of change. And since there's a good chance things will get worse, more places will wind up like Cape Coral in the months to come.

Incidentally, the Jan/Feb issue of The Atlantic will have a brief piece by yours truly looking at some of these foreclosure issues, though my Florida exemplar was a suburb of Miami.