The Rick's Picks switchboard lit up like a string of Black Cats yesterday as alarmed readers responded to my wake-up call ahead of America's impending real estate crash. The sole skeptic has been Frank P, a useful idiot whose thoughts served as counterpoint to the discussion we had on the topic yesterday. Turns out I'm not the only one Frank has been pestering with his odd ideas, including the surreal notion that there is no housing bubble. Louis Hill, author of what looks to be an excellent primer on the gathering bust, has been stalked by Frank, and so, evidently, have others of the bearish persuasion. I won't dwell any longer on his crackpot ideas, but I shouldn't pass up this opportunity to refer you to Hill's fascinating Web site , where you can order up an instant eCopy of his book. It contains some useful chapters on surviving the crash, as well as a lucid and compelling explanation of how we got into this mess. I would also recommend visiting the wonderfully eclectic blog of Charles Hugh Smith, a Steve McQueen lookalike and apparent Sinophile who thought Hill's book was terrific. I mentioned that Frank had sent me some head-in-the-sand dispatches from Bloomberg et al. implying that talk of a housing bust is just alarmism. What I did not realize until yesterday was that for every word of such nonsense that comes out of Bloomberg, there are fifty lucid words from other sources to serve as a reality check. Below is a short list of links sent to me by a reader, in case you'd like to get up to speed. The topics cover housing-bust news for only about the last week or so, but it's a pretty good sampling of the genre. It would be unusual, I must
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