However, I do agree that Bill Gross and Mohammed Al-Arian have been sober and vocal throughout. Hearing Al-Arian’s prescriptions on the future sound pretty depressing. That is, he has been saying that cash is king and wealth protection is paramount. Now he is saying that the economy is going to be bad, and that regular people are going to have real problems dealing with it since credit has dryed up, too. And on top of that, people’s home values are going to decline.

Sounds like a doomer to me.

World crises like this are about handing most of them their heads in their hands to play with, while anointing the very few survivors unbounded power and wealth. That followed by decades of all-in class warfare to rein in the Frankenstein monsters we are about to create.

As for NAR, well what can we say, they have been so discredited over the past few years that no one really takes them seriously anymore. Combine that with their political action activities which hitched their wagon to the wrong party this time around, and we likely have a neutered “Voice of Real Estate”.

First off, soothing words from Professor Garicano’s boss:

“Don’t panic. …”

Mohamed then weighs in with an exercise in diffusing blame onto everyone except himself and his peers …

“There will be three main issues facing ordinary people. The first is the credit crunch, which means that there will be very limited access to credit. The second is increasing unemployment, which will affect the income of ordinary people. And the third is depleting wealth value,” El Erian said.

He added that the crisis was a failure of the whole global financial system. “It is a failure of the system at every level. People want someone to blame, but every level was involved – from individuals who were borrowing without the ability to repay, to regulators who allowed banks to offer unsecured credit.

“We are in the midst of this phenomenon which is now redefining a lot of things around the world. The crisis has multi-level sources, some structural and others related to risk management at every level, be it individual, institutional or governmental. There was also a failure in the systemic checks, which prevent such crises from spreading,” he said.

El Erian also highlighted the response by governments, but stressed the importance of managing expectations because the healing process would be gradual and time-consuming.

“We are redefining the global financial system and we are doing this not according to a master plan, but according to a series of ad hoc reactions. There are deep changes as the unthinkable becomes inevitable, such as the collapse of Lehman or global governmental intervention,” he said.

And last but not least, Suzanne herself weighs in with a NAR-worthy plea for generalized government bailouts:

“Problems are the parents of solutions. This gives us great opportunities to find solutions and new ways of looking at the world. This crisis has no boundaries or geographies, there is no political or market ideology that can isolate any country from the impact of the crisis. It is an interrelated crisis, not limited to the financial sector. We are now seeing its impact on the general economy and governments should deal with problems in the real economy as they dealt with the financial sector.

“Government response worldwide has been notable, as there was co-ordinated action,” she said.