Because if they're not, I KNOW I'm going to be unhappy.I'm from Portland, OR, where there's a "housing crisis" happening.

Income/Asset Verification Requirements: Prior to the crisis lenders were not required to independently verify the income and equity of borrowers.

As for REI in a broader sense, I am curious to see how the Puerto Rican debt crisis will work out.

@Tim Jones, having just watched "The Big Short", seems to me you're guessing now similarly to how you (and the protagonist Michael Burry) guessed in 2005 - that a Mortgage-repayment crisis is on its way?

Then right after the crisis many people told me not to buy a condo, condo's are all bad, etc, not understanding that for an expensive city like Boston condo's are necessary and that bad associations can be improved and not all associations are bad. 

Not crazy about taking a second because there's no idea when this crisis could end, and we don't want to take the chance of losing everything invested there.  

When I brought this idea up with people, I was told we could never have deflation because the Fed would inflate us out of it (I know the Federal Reserve already knew this after the Financial Crisis of 2008).The high inflation of the 1970s was great for student loan debt.

If the current default risk was doubled across all channels, risk would still be well within the pre-crisis standard of 12.5 percent from 2001 to 2003 for the whole mortgage market.”3.

Without understanding the sponsor's global cash flow is very similar to some of the lax underwriting standards seen prior to the economic crisis. 

That said a financial crisis is exactly that.