looks like it was all based on the housing bubble and people lieing about their income to take out loans. it may be that things are so bad right now because things never got better in the first place. maybe we never recovered from the slump in 2000-2002.
Majority of the growth in the last 20 years is mostly fake. Manufacturing, production, agriculture, and exports shrink yet we're supposed to believe the GDP grows...how stupid is that? The only thing that has grown since 1975 is debt and financial vehicles to market debt.
funny, I have been trying to tell people this for years now, there was no organic economic expansion, it was nothing more than a credit expansion.
Come on guys... Look at production of real goods in real terms and you'll see the global economies are much larger than precedent years. The fact that that demand for that actual supply has been driven partially by equity taken out of homes is another story.
Production of real goods like plastic dogshit, and stainless steel kitchen appliances that went into all the mcmansion's that nobody could afford. The excessive consumerism was fueled by debt, that is my belief. Too many people just had to keep up with the fucking Jones's, buy all kinds of shit they couldn't afford, never use and don't need. This was also fueled by a generational character flaw. Most of our parents (depending on your age), were the kind of people that bought what was needed, paid cash and lived inside of their means including saving. If something broke, they would have it fixed. Their kids however (most of us), abandoned those traits and lived in the now, racking up huge debt living paycheck to paycheck, buying nicer and bigger homes than our parents have, nicer cars etc etc. and saving little if anything at all. If something breaks, we throw it away and buy a bigger one. If by some miracle the current situation is fixed without a long running recession/depression, and even if it is not, the lessons being learned right now will stick with this and the next generation. The borrow and spend is over. Going forward, we will likely look alot like Japan over the last two decades, if we are lucky. If you are/were in the rubber dogshit business, you better start looking for a new line of work.