The US housing market continues to go from catastrophic to worse, with delinquency rate for Mortgage loans, 90 days overdue, has hit record levels, according to the latest figures from the Mortgage Bankers' Association.

The problem is that at the height of the real estate boom, borrowers used their homes like a piggy bank. They used the home- equity loans to pay for a wide range of expenses. Want to renovate or pay off credit-card debt? Tap into the loan. And lenders were happy to oblige and make money out of it. If the homeowner could not repay the loan, the house could be sold at a profit while satisfying the claims of creditors. what no-one seemed to count on was the the bursting of the residential real estate bubble. Home prices crashed, leaving many borrowers owing more on their home loans than the value of their property. The latest figures from the Mortgage Bankers' Association are the result.

As MarketWatch points out, the numbers show that everything done so far has failed abysmally. What's needed is a radical full scale mortgage modification plan that will rescue distressed mortgage holders. That's why House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank has urged Barack Obama to stop fiddling around and step up to the plate. According to Frank, he can't afford to wait until January. "I'm a great fan of the president-elect, but I think it's probably the case that he's going to have to be more assertive than he's been," Frank said, addressing the Consumer Federation of America's annual financial services conference, reports CBS News. "And I know what he says is 'Well, we only have one president at a time. My problem is, at a time of great crisis and [massive] mortgage foreclosures. ... I am afraid that overstates the number of presidents."

Fixing the housing market is absolutely critical to ending the recession. A lift in housing demand increases housing construction and durables purchases, and any increase in building activity and home purchases would flow through to other areas such as home goods, furniture and appliances. People would start spending more.

But there are no simple solutions. As Amy Hoak at MarketWatch points out, even with a stimulus we are looking at least another 12 months before things start picking up. And you need a bigger stimulus package, one that will create jobs. People aren't going to go out and buy homes when they're worried they could lose their job.