Earlier this month we learned that the inventory of homes for sale had reached the highest level in 19 years, and housing affordability was at a 14-year low. This week there is yet another article in the Wall Street Journal about housing affordability.

According to a study prepared by Moody’s Economy.com for the Wall Street Journal, housing affordability fell almost 9% in the third quarter from a year ago. In some markets, affordability declined by more than 20%. On a percentage basis you have to go back 25 years to find a decline in affordability as significant as this.

Recent data from the research firm ISI shows that the dollar value of unsold homes in the U.S. has now surpassed $500 billion, up an unprecedented 33 percent from a year ago.

Stephanie divines premonitions of a credit crash, triggered by a collapse in mortgage-backed securities. On the latter score, she points out that mortgage originators are securitizing low-quality loans as fast they can; subprime lenders are shedding jobs; and insiders in both the homebuliding and mortgage sectors "are quietly streaming through the exits." If such early tremors do, indeed, presage a serious quake, anyone leveraged to the hilt stacks up as a prime casualty. And leveraged to the hilt describes many a hedge fund perfectly.