After Seven Lean Years, Part 1: US Residential Real Estate: The Present Position And Future Prospects

[Justin B.]

The broad context of this analysis is straightforward: an economy based on ever-rising consumption falters when real household incomes stagnate or decline. Real income for the bottom 90% has been stagnant for forty years, and has declined since 1999.

he only way to keep consumption rising when incomes are stagnant is to boost the borrowing power (i.e. collateral and creditworthiness) of households by inflating asset bubbles that create temporary (i.e. phantom) collateral and by lowering interest rates so the stagnant income can support more debt.

This is why the Federal Reserve and the other agencies of the Central State have been reduced to blowing serial assets bubbles: there is no other way to keep a consumption-based economy from imploding.

But "prosperity" based on serial asset bubbles and near-zero interest rates is neither real nor sustainable: real prosperity is based on rising real incomes, not debt leveraged on phantom collateral.

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