I am trying to find some info on areas outside of the housing bubble in the most recent boom that also experienced unsustainable ‘growth’
I think this is something really important to explore so that people who think you can blame the whole thing on just simply Freddie, Fannie, Community Reinvestment Act, or ’ A lack of equity, and social acceptance of default’, will be able to see that the problem is much deeper and the true source is the FED and FRB.
I found this in a review of Tomas Sowell’s book who also didn’t quite understand:
Not only does Dr. Sowell’s explanation insufficiently explain the housing boom and bust, it also neglects the larger boom and bust in other high-order goods. It is important for the critical economist to observe and remember that the boom and bust did not take place exclusively in housing and mortgage-heavy investing. Rather, prices and profits in all manner of time-intensive and capital-heavy production followed the same pattern as did housing and investment banking. Dr. Sowell’s explanation that loosened mortgage credit through Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, combined with municipal zoning laws, caused the global boom and bust is far from convincing. His explanation offers no basis for the general boom and subsequent bust within all long-term production processes, from palladium mining to commercial plant expansion, which has been shown to have taken place alongside the housing boom.
Not coincidentally, Tom Woods’s account of the recession in Meltdown accounts not only for the wild rise in housing prices in certain markets, but for the unsustainable rise in long-term production in general. Woods’s account, therefore, addresses the causal forces behind the rise of commodities futures speculation, the upward surge in oil prices which preceded the bust, and the heavy losses recently sustained by capital goods and input producers whose products are only tangentially related to housing prices, such as US Steel.
but I am looking for some more meat to chew on. Does Woods go into this much in Meltdown?