NY Times:

Over the coming months, as many as 1.5 million jobless Americans will exhaust their unemployment insurance benefits, ending what for some has been a last bulwark against foreclosures and destitution

Because of emergency extensions already enacted by Congress, laid-off workers in nearly half the states can collect benefits for up to 79 weeks, the longest period since the unemployment insurance program was created in the 1930s. But unemployment in this recession has proved to be especially tenacious, and a wave of job-seekers is using up even this prolonged aid.

The effect on consumer spending, loan defaults, and foreclosures will not be pretty. There will of course be attempts to prolong benefits even further. Postponing the day of reckoning, and making the eventual collapse that much worse, nothing more.