You're on the right track. Malinvestment needs to be cleared out of the system, it's as simple as that. All of the interventions that the government is performing are sending bogus signals to the market about what's a good investment. Government keeps propping up real estate, so more investment dollars get diverted to real estate. It's no coincidence that there are about 3 dozen different home improvement, house-flipping, and real estate oriented shows on TV right now. Government is preventing the real values from being realized, but it's like trying to push an avalanche uphill. Eventually the thing's going to give way and all of those investment dollars are going to get drained into something else.Let's just print more money...problem solved.
Really, if we would just let 'nature' take it's course then we might be better off. The competition and cut-throat business tactics going on right now are making it hard for everyone to survive. If we end the bailout and instead weed-out some of these companies, then we might be able to bring prices back up to where they should be and people wouldn't have to be pinching pennies as much (ie layoffs and cutbacks). I'm no expert and might get flamed for this post but hey...
Bernanke is an idiot.
So was the guy before him, and the guy before that. I think it's a prerequisite for the job.