Out of the Frying Pan...

About 28% of all mortgages are underwater and interest rates are at historic and extended lows. So surely people must be paying less for housing, yes? Um… no:

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For all the attention given to almost $4-a-gallon gas, the biggest threat to containing U.S. inflation may be the shift away from homeownership, which is pushing up the cost of leases across the nation’s 38 million rented residences…

“They should have looked at rents,” said Maury Harris, chief U.S. economist in New York at UBS Securities LLC, whose team at UBS was the most accurate inflation forecaster over 2009 and 2010, according to Bloomberg calculations. “They’re putting too much weight on the ‘slack is all that matters’ theory. It matters but, for heaven’s sake, it’s not all that matters.”

Housing has become “a contributor to inflation, and it continues to rise,” agreed Bruce McCain, chief investment strategist at the private-banking unit of KeyCorp in Cleveland, with $22 billion in assets under management.

So you lose your house in foreclosure, only to find you can’t even afford a decent apartment.

Keep pushing on that string, Mr. Bernanke.

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