Housing bubble wipes out savings

Since most American's use their houses as a way to save money, and since housing prices are declining two percent/month, savings are disappearing at an alarming rate:

The decline in house prices since the middle of 2006 has lead to the loss of ... more than $50,000 for every homeowner in the country. Real house prices are now dropping at close to a 2.0 percent monthly rate, which translates into a loss of almost $350 billion everymonth.

The projections show that the crash of the housing bubble is likely to eliminate most, if not all, of the gains that families had made in accumulating wealth over the last two decades. The median family in the cohorts from age 35-44 is actually projected to have less wealth in 2009 than their counterpart in this age group in 1989. The median family in the cohort from ages 45-54 is projected to have just 0.8 percent more wealth in 2009 than the median family in this age cohort in 1989.