Every morning I get a depressing opportunity in my email.

It’s a new foreclosure list. On one hand, I could be calling all these people, trying to get the house sold before the bank takes it. On the other hand, one way or another these people are losing their home.

By now you probably have heard the good-news/bad-news that November’s foreclosures were down from October’s foreclosures by 10%. Unfortunately, those foreclosures are still up 68% over last year.

Are we near the end? Maybe. Are we closer to the end than the beginning? Almost certainly. A little common sense is starting to return to the lending industry, propelled by the Fed itself. They have proposed “sweeping” consumer protections which will, in essence, make it harder to get a mortgage for people who do not meet the traditional criteria: good credit; big downpayment; verified income and employment — a problem for entrepreneurs. As Floyd Norris points out, these new rules will not do anything whatsoever to fix the current problem, but it may help prevent it from happening again. Assuming, of course, that the protections are not scrapped as “hopelessly old-fashioned” in a few decades.