US foreclosure rate soars 43%, with 318,000 underwater US homedebtors about to be shown the door

In the end, millions of homedebtors will lose their homes, the homes they told everyone they "owned", the homes everyone told them would "be a great investment".

I'm not sure which is more stupid, Bush's "ownership society" recommendation to buy at the peak regardless of price, or his "we'll be treated like liberators" idea in Iraq.

Get ready America for a wave of millions of unemployed, destitute, angry and hopeless citizens. Thank you Alan Greenspan - I hope you sleep well tonight.

Foreclosures jumped 43 percent nationwide in the third quarter from a year ago, according to RealtyTrac Inc., providing further evidence that the housing market keeps slowing.

About 318,000 properties entered some form of foreclosure in the third quarter, up 17 percent from the second quarter, with sharp jumps in Nevada, Florida and Louisiana.

"What our third-quarter research appears to be showing is that the first wave of adjustable-rate mortgages is having a negative impact on the number of homes going into foreclosure," said James Saccacio, chief executive of RealtyTrac. "With the volume of these loans - more than $1 trillion of them due to adjust over the next 15 months - this is a trend that bears watching."

Many of these loans let buyers put down little or no money on houses, and analysts are watching to see how these refinancings affect the market.