Nouriel Roubini, the New York University economist who gained renown for accurately calling the housing bubble, has purchased a condominium in Manhattan worth $5.5 million, according to a Bloomberg News report.

Public records show Roubini took out a $2.99 million mortgage to buy the condo on East First Street, according to Bloomberg. The apartment is reportedly a 3,700-square-foot triplex penthouse.

Roubini was dubbed "Dr. Doom" because of his many pessimistic forecasts about the global economy. He recently said there is still a risk the U.S. economy could slide back into recession, Bloomberg notes, and last month he said another "disaster" will happen if U.S. house prices fall again and prime mortgage defaults increase.

Does Roubini now think housing prices have bottomed? Bloomberg reached Roubini on his cell phone Friday, but he declined to comment on the condo purchase.

Perhaps the economist has succumbed to "frugal fatigue" -- a term that refers to when consumers, beaten down by the "Great Recession" become tired of fretting about every expense and treat themselves again.

The condo's listing by Halstead Property broker Richard Orenstein certainly makes the home sound alluring.

"Connected by a custom cantilevered steel staircase, each level of this amazing home offers something unique and unforgettable," the listing reads. "On the first floor, you'll find a massive living/dining area bathed in southern light with 11-foot beamed ceilings, exposed brick walls, a wood-burning fireplace, and light from a 50-foot expanse of oversized windows."

If you're wondering why the housing market is still stuck in its worst slide in six decades, this chart pretty much says it all.

Though the market peaked in 2006, the toxic mortgages that have created this mess had two- and three-year fuses before they began exploding in 2007. Those interest rate "resets" created the initial wave of foreclosures and helped push the economy into recession.

As the recession took hold and unemployment soared, families with perfectly good mortgages - who had lost their paychecks - began losing their homes in bigger numbers.

The pace eased up somewhat in late 2008, in large part as lenders put foreclosures on hold to see what kind of relief the government would come up with. But neither the government's programs nor the lending industry's voluntary "solutions" have done anything to bend the curve lower.

Unless that changes, expect the housing market to continue to struggle under the weight of millions more "distressed" sales as banks repossess homes and put them back on the already-weak market. Some 3.5 million foreclosed homes have been sold since 2003, and there are at least that many more expected. One estimate puts the number of homes at risk at 11 million - or about one-fifth of U.S. home mortgages.

To bring the deficit down, your own tax bill might need to go up.

The Wall Street Journal reports that a federal commission charged with finding ways to reduce the deficit is considering whether to tinker with popular tax breaks such as the mortgage interest deduction and child tax credits.

All told, experts say tax credits such as those add up to about $1 trillion a year. That makes them an extremely attractive target as the commission considers ways to reduce the hulking deficit. The aim of the deficit commission, a bipartisan committee created by President Obama, is to balance the budget by 2015.

But voters love those tax credits, and they can lead to the type of real savings that make it affordable for a mother to work, a family to have health insurance or a couple to decide whether or not to buy a house.

"These [tax credits] are very popular. They have a big effect on people's lives. You can afford the house instead of not being able to afford it," said Roberton Williams, a senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center, a think tank.

That's why Williams thinks there's virtually no chance House and Senate leaders would consider doing away with mortgage interest deductions completely. Still, he does think there's a chance that lawmakers would be open to modifying those tax breaks to save the government some money.

The current housing and foreclosure crisis, not to mention the fragile economy, means any change to mortgage interest deductions could be risky. It could cause home prices to drop more, and it could make it harder for first-time home buyers to afford a home.

"On the one hand we don't want to do things in the short run that will squelch the economic recovery," Williams said. "At the same time we don't want to tie our hands in ways that will make it harder to get our fiscal house back in order in two or three years."

“Been down so long, it looks like up to me,” sang Memphis bluesman Walter “Furry” Lewis.

The song was recorded in 1928, but Lewis may as well have been singing about the U.S. housing market circa 2010.

The headline on the latest monthly sales report for existing homes looks pretty good: traffic in September picked up a full 10 percent from the month before. On a percentage basis, the gain was spectacular – the biggest monthly increase in 28 years.

But that’s about as far as the good news goes.

The upturn – which still leaves home sales at levels 19 percent lower than a year ago – represents a snapback after a steep plunge this summer. After the government’s temporary tax credit for first time home buyers expired in June, existing home sales fell to the lowest level in 16 years.

With those tax credits gone, the housing market is again struggling against the headwinds of high unemployment, falling prices, a glut of unsold homes and a wave of foreclosures that shows little sign of letting up. Recent disclosures by lenders of a paperwork quagmire, along with an investigation by all 50 states into foreclosure practices, have further clouded the outlook.

Despite the September rebound, the annual rate of existing home sales was 36 percent below the peak pace in 2005.

“We doubt that (the September increase) is the start of a real recovery, which may now be further delayed by the foreclosure crisis,” said Paul Dales, U.S. economist at Capital Economics, in a note to clients Monday.

While sales bounced off summer lows, home prices have been sliding since June. Last month, the median sale price was $171,700, down 2.4 percent from the same month year ago. That’s six percent lower than June, 2010. With foreclosed houses weighing on prices, and millions more in the foreclosure pipeline, the price slump will likely continue, according to Dales.

“Prices will remain under downward pressure until demand moves back in line with supply," he wrote. "That's going to take years, rather than months."

We've gotten used to hearing that the Great Recession was the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, and we've all had a pretty good hunch that the recovery hasn't exactly been fantastic, either.

Now, here's more proof. The Council on Foreign Relations recently compared the current economic recovery - which officially began in June 2009 - to other economic recoveries since World War II. They found that this one has been the weakest on a number of measures, including real gross domestic product, employment and housing.

Want proof? The blue line in this chart shows average housing prices in other postwar recoveries. This "recovery," which shows housing prices continuing to fall, is in red.

"This continued fall in nominal home prices is easily the worst in postwar experience," the report says.

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So this is what a recovery looks like?

The number of unmarried couples living together shot up by 13 percent between 2009 and 2010, and some of the decisions may not have been completely motivated by romance.

Maybe more folks needed someone to help pay the rent.

Rose Kreider, a researcher with the U.S. Census, crunched the numbers and found that the sharp increase in opposite-sex couples living together coincided with a big jump in unemployment among the unmarried couples.

Nearly 7.5 million couples were cohabitating in 2010, up from about 6.7 million in 2009.

The number of unmarried people living together has generally risen since the Census started tracking the data in 1996, but the gains have rarely been so great. In fact, there was a statistically insignificant 2 percent drop in cohabitating couples from 2008 to 2009. That followed a 5 percent gain from 2007 to 2008.

The recession of 2007-09 has taken its toll on unmarried couples. In 2008, 59 percent of cohabitating couples said both partners were employed, but that percentage fell to 52 percent in 2009 and 49 percent in 2010.

In addition, people who moved in together this year were more likely to include at least one jobless partner than couples who already were living together. Kreiser said just 39 percent of newly cohabitating couples were both employed, compared with 50 percent of couples that were already together.

Although the recession officially started in December 2007, Kreiser speculates that the big spike in couples moving in together began more recently because, as unemployment has dragged on, more people have exhausted savings, unemployment benefits and other ways to pay rent on their own.

"The fact that a higher proportion of the new couples are younger may also make it more difficult for them to find jobs in a tough economy where older workers with more skills are also looking for jobs," Kreider wrote in a white paper released this week.

The Census data also show an increase in same-sex cohabitating couples this year, but Kreiser says that was expected because of a change in how same-sex couples are counted.

These days, homebuyers seem to be getting more and more like regular consumers, unwilling to pay full price because they know that same house - or one just like it - could end up on the sale rack pretty soon.

Increasingly, that bet is paying off.

The percentage of homes on the market that have had their price reduced has slowly edged up over the course of the year, according to real estate brokerage ZipRealty’s analysis of prices in 26 major markets.

ZipRealty said about 47 percent of homes in those markets had at least one price reduction in August, up from about 40 percent in January.

The price drops may be helping move some homes, but they don't appear to be enough to really jump-start the weak real estate market. The National Association of Realtors said Thursday that existing home sales rose 7.6 percent in August from a month earlier, to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.13 million. Still, that's a 19 percent drop from a year earlier.

The NAR said median price for an existing home was $178,600, up less than 1 percent from a year ago.

Buyers might be smart to hold out even after the price has been reduced once. According to ZipRealty’s data, sellers who drop their asking price typically reduce the price a second time.

How much should you expect your dream house to go down in price?

The median reduction was $19,092 in August, or 7 percent of the list price. That amount that has remained fairly steady this year, according to ZipRealty’s analysis.

The data was culled from MLS listings in major markets such as Boston, Dallas, Las Vegas, Seattle and Los Angeles. ZipRealty only included the 26 major markets in which it operates, representing most of the nation’s 35 biggest markets.

Employers are increasingly stressed about housing problems, based on calls to a major provider of employee assistance programs, sometimes known as EAPs.

ComPsych Corp., among the largest providers of such programs, says that in the first half of this year, for the first time it received more calls about housing woes than childcare needs. That’s a major shift that shows just how big of a problem the housing crisis continues to be, even for working Americans.

ComPsych said calls about moving rose by 14 percent in the first half of the year, as compared to the previous six months. The increase was driven largely by employees dealing with foreclosure or the need to find more affordable housing.

Housing was the No. 1 problem for employees with 10,250 calls, compared with 8,000 calls related to childcare needs, usually the top problem.

A slump in the housing market has been a major factor in the recession and weak economic recovery. The Commerce Department said Tuesday that housing starts grew by 10.5 percent in August from a month earlier, driven largely by increases in condominium and apartment construction. Still, the figures are very weak by historical standards.

Employees are facing other stresses related to the economy as well. ComPsych said it received 4,250 calls about caring for elderly relatives, with many seeking less expensive options. That was a 23 percent increase in that category.

Another 2,500 called the employee assistance lines with health-related questions, up 11 percent over the previous six months. Many were seeking lower-cost options for medical care.

ComPsych serves about 33 million individuals at 13,000 companies worldwide.