Flippers. Record home prices. Stock markets at record highs. Record low-interest rates. Just add some sad tales about young couples making $250,000 per year in Silicon Valley who still can't afford a million-dollar bungalow and you've got 2007 all over again.

Even during the worst days of the collapse of the housing bubble (Sundays through Saturdays), it was widely assumed that the real pain would be confined to Vegas, and Florida, and other places where people woke up and realized that they'd just paid $1.3 million for a particleboard McMansion in the middle of a desert and/ or swamp.

Does trying to convince people unsure about the shaky economy and plunging home values to sign mortgages seem like a good idea, right now? Pollster Grifter Mark Penn thinks so!

There are so many gaudily fraudulent characters in the story of this country's mania for buying and selling homes — like Sam Leccima, the former Flip This House star who allegedly slapped "Sold" signs on unsold houses and didn't even have a real-estate license. A&E yanked his shows from the channel's lineup after charges that his house-flipping efforts were a hoax.