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Here is a wide ranging presentation where Robert Shiller lays out his thesis that a great many economic events are influenced by emotional behaviour, or the "animal spirits" of Keynes.

Roubini delves into all facets of the current situation and implications going forward.  Double dip recession?  Deflation, hyperinflation?  Well, nobody knows exactly what is going to happen, but Nouriel lays out the conditions that could lead to some of these scenarios coming to pass in a straightforard way.  Thanks Bloomberg.

I'll give Kye Grace credit for saying it - the RE industry exists to hold the hands of consumers (sorry, paraphrasing), and one of the services the real estate industry has been able to provide up until now is access to proprietary information - taxes, sale prices, listing prices etc, all via the database attached to the MLS system, and all delivered "exclusively" to your email or browser courtesy of your neighbourhood real estate professional. 

In the US, sites like Zillow and Trulia have begun to chip away at this monolithic business model, but in Canada, the lack of access to non-industry housing stats seems to be the biggest difference preventing the likes of Zillows from operating in Canada.