What so you see in your housing market this weekend? Lower prices? "Prices for some swanky pads on Long Island have been reduced recently, and it's taking longer to sell, signs that the high-end market has started to feel the pinch, same as the regular folks. Agencies' inventories of expensive homes have gone up, triple in one case."

"A Centre Island estate where owner Patricia Altschul's mini horses gambol, has dropped from $19 million last fall to $15.8 million now. Middlesea, singer Billy Joel's estate on Centre Island, has dropped from last September's $37.5 million to $32.5 million."

"'At the high end, there's an end to the speculative market, in which people felt they could pay anything and sell and have their property be worth more than whatever they paid for it a year later,' said Robert Campbell, associate professor of real estate finance at Hofstra University. 'People are no longer making that assumption.'"

Homebuilder news? "D.R. Horton Inc.'s debt ratings are teetering on the brink of junk territory and further weakness in the housing sector and tighter lending standards may push the largest U.S. home builder's ratings over the edge."

"'The company remains perhaps the most notorious speculative builder in the industry, a strategy that we expect to weigh heavily on margins and increase risk that inventory levels could rise more significantly than currently expected in coming months,' Barclays Capital said."

Legal matters? "New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's probe into whether mortgage brokers pressured appraisers to inflate property values as housing prices increased in recent years continues to expand."

"Mr. Cuomo said that 'many, many more' subpoenas have been issued by his office than the four that have been reported publicly so far."

Or housing bubble reflection? "Alan Greenspan's regulatory record has received far less scrutiny than his management of the economy. That may be changing. A former colleague says Mr. Greenspan blocked a proposal to increase scrutiny of subprime lenders under the Fed's broad authority."

"'I would have liked the Fed to be a leader' in cracking down on predatory lending, Mr. Gramlich, now a scholar at the Urban Institute, said in an interview this past week. Knowing it would be controversial with Mr. Greenspan, whose deregulatory philosophy is well known, Mr. Gramlich broached it to him personally rather than take it to the full board."

"'He was opposed to it, so I didn't really pursue it,' says Edward Gramlich, who was Fed governor from 1997 to 2005."