With all the 'buzz' around the 2011 Budget, perhaps one overlooked harbinger of where the economy is going was the revealing of the 'My First House Scheme'.

Traditionally, potential homeowners have to submit a 20% down payment on their mortgages, with their total mortgage amounts approximately equalling 2.5 times their annual salaries.

Under this new house scheme, homeowners earning under RM3,000 a month can now get 100% of their home loans financed for a house worth RM220,000 or less.

This means that homeowners earning RM36,000 a year can buy a house that is worth over six times their annual incomes, with no down payment to tie them to the house.

It seems that no one has noticed that this supposedly generous offering is paving the way for a gross overheating of the residential property bubble.

It is interesting to note the reduction of the down payment percentage on home/commercial loans, along with otherwise lax lending practices, significantly contributed to the US real estate bubbles of the 1980s and 2000s, as well as to the 1997 Asian financial crisis.

For all the promises of economic prosperity and nation-building by our country's ruling party, we are actually setting the stage for something completely different.

Perhaps the worse part of this new scheme is that the people that it is meant to help - low-income earners - are going to suffer the most.

These people are going to be kept in economic malaise simply for by chasing the dream of so many families around the world - owning one's own home.

With a growing deficit, large government borrowings, and no spending constraints, our country is heading the way that the US did (twice), but without the history of economic strength and success to show for it.