Seruzawa, You make some really good points here.
First, there are a LOT of people up a creek with this mortgage situation. Not only the subprime lenders and borrowers who are the obvious crises, but there's a LOT of people who thought they had magically "earned" a bunch of money when their property values went through the roof. Baloney. If you "refinanced," you just went further into debt; albeit possibly at a lower rate. If you sold, unless you were moving from CA to IA, you didn't really net any income because all the other houses to buy went up too. This is going to have BIG a long term impact on disposable income and "discretionary" purchases like bikes.
The White House, Congress, and the Fed were all in cahoots (conspiracy theory coming up, younger kids should leave the room) with the bankers on this. They "fattened up" the buyers and homeowners with the scam subprime loans and subsquent price explosion for housing, and now they're going to "harvest" this "crop" when they take their homes in foreclosure for a fraction of their "value." Nice work if you can get it.
As for HD prices, well, even though I've put a lot of bucks in my '77 over the years, I have a standing offer to sell it for exactly what I bought it for from a buddy. I've never seen a time when HD prices fell. The new bike prices will be maintained by limiting production. HD will never substantially discount their prices; to do so flies in the face of their corporate marketing philosophy.
Kill ******. It's the only answer.