The recovery of the economy depends on several important factors, but the recovery of the real estate market is near the top of the list, especially commercial real estate (CRE) because most of America's banks are loaded down with CRE debt. As a result of a massive infusion of capital into the real estate market since 2002 resulting from the Fed's historic pumping of money into the economy from 2001 to 2006, CRE prices skyrocketed causing the boom-bust cycle from which we are now trying to recover.

As a result, cheap money poured into projects that, but for the false prosperity of an inflated money supply, were unprofitable. All this malinvestment came to a head when the Fed turned off the money spigot starting in 2006 and led to an historic bust.