Despite the speculative doom and gloom, economists believe a fiscal cliff-spurred recession would not spark the kind of home price-hemorrhaging witnessed when the housing bubble burst five years ago.

FORBES: Could Housing Fall Off The Fiscal Cliff?

He really laid out the problem quite well, at least, the problem of the last two or three years, that there was a speculative bubble in the price of housing, that the financial institutions, the banks and investment banks and all these insurance companies and pension funds and everyone else exacerbated that problem by spreading that risk all throughout the economy.

NPR: How Will Our Next President Fix the Economy?

Without any housing bubble to burst, the area's median home price even inched up last year.

ECONOMIST: Statewatch: Illinois

This GREATLY exacerbated the housing bubble which had already started and led to near financial armagedon with the housing price crash and banking insolvencies.

FORBES: If Alan Greenspan Wants To 'End The Fed', Times Must Be Changing

Of course, these theorists have not acknowledged that the broadest measure of home prices, the index calculated by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, has yet to show home-price declines that would signal any kind of "bubble" being popped.

FORBES: Political Economy