Expect more pain in the housing market next year, says Don Miller. Rising unemployment will keep the foreclosures coming. And as the backlog of inventories swells, Don says homebuilders still look ripe for shorting in this environment.

This from Money Morning:

The U.S. housing market is already being pounded by the “perfect storm.” And the outlook for the New Year is for the stormy weather to continue – and probably to get worse.

As if a locked-up credit market and tidal waves of foreclosures weren’t already enough, we’re now watching unemployment climb and consumer confidence plunge.

But even when the housing market is taking on water, there are ways to stay afloat. Indeed, investors nimble enough to maneuver can even make money.

The watchword on this market, though, is caution.  If an investor decides to test the waters, beware of the extraordinary financial undertow.

Here’s a look at what’s happening now, and

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I love Wellington. Really, I do. It’s where I met my lovely wife and where I’d live if I had a pure, unimpeded choice. Great people. Amazing landscape. Compact city. Great arts. Wonderful cafes such as my favourite, Midnight Espresso on Cuba St. It’s got it all. In fact, it’s got too much.

Wellington has become utterly dominated and powered by the most rapacious government in the history of New Zealand. This is not something I’m saying lightly or for the first time, although this is the most direct I’ve been.

Wellington has become a living, wheezing symbol of an economy where an all-consuming government is gobbling up resources and dragging down productivity in such a way as to transfer wealth and income from private employees and businesses to government employees while kneecapping economic growth.

This current government is eating the economy and it needs to be stopped

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By William Patalon III Executive Editor Money Morning/The Money Map Report There are scads of books on the market purporting to tell the story of investing guru Warren Buffett. I know, because during my days as a business journalist, I read - or at least perused - almost all of them. And as my lovely wife Robin will tell you, most of those now-dusty tomes still adorn my office shelves at home - along with all the other "research materials" left over from my 20 years as a journalist and author. But we all know that time is a very precious commodity these days, so please allow me to save some of yours. If you really want to learn about Buffett, the man, and Buffett, the investor, there’s really only one biography worth reading: "Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist," by ...

By Horacio Marquez Contributing Editor Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE: BRK.A, BRK.B) with Warren Buffett at the helm has one of the greatest financial combinations investors have ever seen. The shares of the once-wheezing textile-maker-turned-investment-vehicle doubled over the past 10 years while the broad Standard &Poor’s 500 Index returned only 18% during the same period. In the process, Buffett became the richest man on the planet, with a net worth of about $62 billion, Forbes magazine reported back in March. Since then, however, Berkshire Hathaway’s shares have plunged 23% - the "Class A" shares closed Friday at $116,650 each, down from their 52-week high of $151,650 (the "Class B" shares represent 1/30th of the Class A shares). And Berkshire Hathaway recently reported a slight drop in its year-to-year earnings due to some weaknesses in its operating businesses, as ...