by Calculated Risk on 2/19/2010 04:36:00 PM

From WLWT.com: Frustrated Owner Bulldozes Home Ahead Of Foreclosure (ht Philip, Rob Dawg)

[Terry Hoskins] used a bulldozer two weeks ago to level the home he'd built, and the sprawling country home is now rubble, buried under a coating of snow.

"As far as what the bank is going to get, I plan on giving them back what was on this hill exactly (as) it was," Hoskins said. "I brought it out of the ground and I plan on putting it back in the ground."

Hoskins' business in Amelia is scheduled to go up for auction on March 2, and he told Fuller he's considering leveling that building, too.

There is a video at the link above and here are some photos.

From Diana Olick at CNBC: Housing Bailout Grows

Today President Obama stood in Nevada, ground zero for the foreclosure crisis, a state with 13 percent unemployment, and announced another pricey program to keep borrowers in their homes.

... This one gives $1.5 billion to the hardest hit states ... to "help address the problems facing the hardest hit housing markets." White House officials describe this as states that have "suffered an average home price drop of over 20 percent from the peak."

Click on graph for larger image in new window.

This graph is from Doug Short of dshort.com (financial planner). His comments:

This chart is an offshoot of my Four Bad Bears. It shifts the point of alignment from the pre-bear highs to the bear bottom in the Oil Crisis and Tech Crash, the first major low in the 1929 Dow, and the March 9th closing low for our current Financial Crisis.

As the chart illustrates, the S&P 500 lows in 1974 and 2002 marked the beginnings of sustained recoveries. The Dow low in 1929 failed 11 months later.