But something else hit me... I've written about this in the past in conceptual terms but never put it into an analysis.  The true stealth stimulus plan in America is letting so many of its people live "rent free" as they sit in defaulted homes not making a mortgage payment.  This "cost savings" allows them to shop and spend, and otherwise support the American consumption society.  While it is hard to keep track of all the stimuli, try to think back to the Bush spring 2008 stimulus.  (that was about 37 stimuli ago) That goosed GDP quite well for two quarters.  But we now have a quasi permanent stimulus plan that goes on quarter, after quarter, year after year.... and its equivalent to have a permanent Bush level stimulus (using VERY conservative figures). 

Let's look at this from a more analytical eye.

1) The number of households in America is approximately 111,000,000 (111 million)

The home ownership rate, after peaking near 70% (the long term trend was 65%ish but we've tried every trick in the book the past decade to get another 5% into the "ownership society), currently it sits under 68%.  I will use 67.5%

That means 111M x 67.5% = 75M households in America "own" a home.

2) We saw just last week that more homes in the US were in deliquency or foreclosure, than there are for sale - about 9.6% in delinquency and 4.5% in foreclosure.  So 14.1% of home "owners" are living "rent free" - i.e. freeing them from a home payment.  Of course some of these people are in dire circumstances so let's not be too flippant about it, but others have chosen to make a calculated decision to walk away from underwater homes and until the banks show up to take the house back they have no housing payment.

So of the 75M households in America owning a home, about 14% are not making a payment. 

That means 10.5M households in America are living in a shelter where they either can not, or choose not to make a mortgage payment.

3) Now comes the tricky part, trying to figure out the average note payment.  I truly have no idea so let's make an educated guess.  The median value of a home in America is roughly $170K, and the average loan to value is about 70%.