Ah, same here, Michael. Very few loans getting through ever since the "unpleasantness."
I also agree with your assessment of permanent decline (until Generation Y is ready to buy in force - there are a lot of them and they are like an echo of the baby boom). The wife and I had discussed permanent decline as well when reasoning out that buying a house was a very bad idea.
Once those baby boomers start dumping houses (especially when they can no longer live alone, etc...), the glut will be tremendous - even more so because so many of them own more than one house and control so much of the wealth.
I often wonder how that wealth will transfer. After all, they can't take it with them.
Many don't re-invest in the community/country, but at some point, they will have to spend it or give it away. My bet is that it's all going to go to health care and in home nursing type care, along with treats like vacations and things like that. So... naturally those industries will be receiving all of that personal wealth the boomers have accumulated as they spend it.
As much as many of that group despise passing wealth down through the family line, it will still be their children and grand children (as employees of the industries they will blow their money on) that will receive the wealth. It has to transfer somehow, since it's worthless when you're dead. I figure that's what will happen to transfer the wealth.
My generation (X) can benefit from their needs by setting up businesses to cater to them. My generation also benefits as we get old enough to need assisted living, since there will be a huge retiree infrastructure built out from the boomers that will be pennies on the dollar. There are very few Gen Xers in the world, so we do get that one benefit - extra retirement places - and of course, extra houses after they unload them too.
