Last week, HW managing director Richard Bitner made the media rounds to tout his new book, Confessions of a Subprime Lender. One of the appearances was on none other than Larry King Live, which means we now officially can say that Larry King has uttered the words “Housing Wire dot com.”

Bitner managed to counter the more Pollyanna-ish takes from some of the other panelists, providing at least a dose of much-needed reality. Primary clip:

All panelists were also asked whether they were “optimistic” about housing in the near-term; see the below clip, starting around the 7:14 mark:

For those that follow these sort of things, Richard will be on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart discussing the housing mess on Monday, July 21. (Yes, really.)

And if you haven’t bought his book yet, you should; it’s one of the few written by someone that actually lived in the world of subprime lending. He owned Kellner Mortgage Investments — number 44 on the Implode-o-Meter’s list of now-defunct lenders.