economist yelena shulyatyeva thinks home prices will continue to drop. >> we still expect housing prices to fall, probably another 5%, throughout this year and likely into next year. we have two plus years of shadow inventory, including foreclosures, delinquencies-- and that will continue weighing heavily on housing prices. >> reporter: part of the problem is that an estimated 11 million homeowners around the country are underwater, meaning they owe more on their mortgage than the home is worth. that's about one out of every four residential mortgages. the housing market also faces another major headwind, tight lending requirements. often buyers can't qualify for the mortgage they want. >> lending standards are still tight. they eased up a little bit, but they're still tight and you have to have a good job, and you have to have the money for the down payment. it's still very hard for new home buyers to enter the market. >> reporter: historically low mortgage rates are one of the few positives for the real estate market. a 30-year fixed is still averaging below 5% nationwide. but economis

he is president of strategic energy and economic research and another member of our cross talking yelena hunger all right gentlemen this is crosstalk that means you can jump in anytime you want michael i'd like to go to you first the first question a lot of people are asking looking at these horrific tragedies being played out in japan is what about the global recovery the fragile global recovery how much of it is japan's derailing right now temporary or long term going to affect the global recovery of the last two years. well the hope is that it's going to turn out to be fairly moderate impact on the global economy the fear is that if japanese industry finds itself disrupted for a lengthy period then stock markets around the world could take a hit and we could be back in a double dip recession but that's that still remains to be seen whether that's going to happen ok what are you patrick i mean what are the it when we look at the the macro scale the global scale here is that we just mentioned here a lot of people are looking at the industrial capacity of japan which is key to its econom

bush and another member of our cross talking yelena who got ha right a bell i'd like to go to you this is cross talk you've been on the program before and you know how it works here i'll be very blunt with you over the last few hours complain about let's go back a week ago and then let's look at the last few hours a week ago a military intervention of any kind seems rather small i don't want to use the word remote but small and now a week later we're in a war and is it regime change and what about the law of unintended consequences. well officially isn't gene change officially this is an intervention to prevent the massacre of civilians one of the decisive one of the things that was very decisive i think in the shift in the position of the american president and also the security council was when colonel gadhafi went on the air and said he would be merciless when he stormed benghazi and that was in the middle of his offensive his counter offensive pushing the rebel forces the insurgent forces back and he went on the air and said we will go room to room house to house we will be mercile

cross to florida o'connell he's chairman of civic form pac and another member of our cross talk team yelena hunger all right gentlemen all three of you have been on cross talk before so you know how it works for and i want to go to you and inside a little bit about collective bargaining in the united states democracy are the founding fathers a little worried right now as they see what's coming out of ohio and out of wisconsin the current resting i had states isn't about the merits of democracy democracy is live alive and well it's really about sort of spending and fiscal responsibility as a relates to government this may be the issue of the decade in the united states to be perfectly honest with you democrats love to blame folks like george w. bush i don't reality the situation dates back to over a generation ago when they johnson and frankly both parties are culpable we're running a federal deficit of one point five trillion and national debt nearing fifteen trillion everybody knows we need to cut back but nobody wants to step forward to make the difficult cuts with that said if america wa

alexander she is coeditor of the intellectual conservative and another member of our crosstalk team yelena hunter all right folks this is prostate that means you can jump in anytime you want to read and if i can go to you in london first. we what we've been seeing in the arab middle east that say let's be very generous of the last two months do you think that the powers that be in the west that have had so much influence in these countries over the last few decades i would say negative have digested the gravity of the change that is occurred in that region and what democracy means to people in the region. i don't think they have i think they underestimate the extent of what's happening in the arab world and i think they underestimated the extent to which arab people want democracy because what we've seen in these uprisings is that people very clearly want more democratic control over their lives they want more choice they want more freedom and they discovered that they're only going to get that by taking action themselves we can see from iraq and afghanistan and other pizarro stress nation