And their thought on that is that they have more open space even though they have big houses, and that someone who maybe doesn't have quite as deep a pocket could build a smaller house in the county and help finance it by selling away some of these extra square footage.

NPR: Boulder Wrestles with Mega Houses

Iceland and Cyprus have discovered how painful it is to have a banking system without such a deep pocket lender of last resort.

CNN: Don't get bitten by Bitcoins