The enormity of the housing crisis and the subprime meltdown has been clear all week at the Reuters Housing Summit.

While the moods from our guests this week have swayed from “hopeful” to “concerned” to “despairing”, the tone of Wednesday night’s panel, done in partnership with MSN Money, was definitely high-spirited.

The panelists — Seabreeze Partners head Doug Kass, homebuilder Bob Toll, Neighborhood Assistance Corp. of America CEO Bruce Marks and MSN columnist Jim Jubak – represented a diverse mix of the different parts of the industry and their opinions beared those differences out.

Despite the different perspectives, all of the panelists agreed this has been an enormously bad few years for the entire housing sector and they were not, as a group, that optimistic that things were going to get a whole lot better before 2009 rolls around.

In this posting, we have included a first few pictures from the panel, and have also added some video clips from the festivities.

So what’s “Money Heaven”? Following a question from one of the 200+ guests at the panel, hosted by Reuters in our New York offices in Times Square, Doug Kass explained where all the money goes when a bubble bursts — this time from the decline in home prices.

And once you go to heaven … well, it’s pretty tough making a comeback, even if you’re just dead money.

The Reuters Housing Summit runs through Friday in New York, London and Washington, D.C.

(Photos by Ivan Villegas)