Hundreds of trillions? The entire wealth of the US is around 88 trillion (https://www.wsj.com/articles/americans-total-wealth-hits-rec...).

> The banks got really creative, a bunch of people made nice bonuses, then when their fancy leveraged mechanisms went bad, we all had to bail them out.

You will have to be a little more specific to discredit the economic mal-incentives created by the government and to spin that simple narrative.

And the amount of paper wealth lost in '07-08 was actually about 10 trillion, not "hundreds of trillions."

The point stands at 10 trillion, thanks for the correction.

I'm not sure what you want with more specificity. You're familiar with the situation, right? You want a book report on what happened?

Yes, the government exists, and no, a few extra loans for black people didn't crash the housing market. This was a problem between ratings agencies, salespeople, and financial instrument inventors.

For comparison, according to Richard Duncan the foreign exchange reserves was raised by $7 trillion for a total of $9 trillion: https://www.richardduncaneconomics.com/currency-manipulators...

There's no reason a person that does not work in finance should have a deep understanding of the US financial system, but don't try to spin a narrative without knowing what you're talking about. You should read the article I initially posted before replying to it.

The article you linked is way, way out of the mainstream on the topic.

That's fine and all but turning around and accusing the conventional wisdom of 'lacking a deep understanding' is a bit much.

Unfortunately, you are correct about that -- it isn't a mainstream view at all, which is why I share it during relevant discussions.

However, the fact that a narrative with political implications is "mainstream" does nothing for its credibility. I try to understand how these things work and while it's a pretty nebulous domain, the factors I presented are what seem to be the most significant I've seen in explaining the behavior of the real estate market, and further, the market at large, in '01-'08.

We are both rightfully upset that the crisis "somehow led to trillions of dollars missing" -- while paper wealth and market cycles are inevitable, the magnitude and 'unfairness' of this event is clearly a problem. However, when you then confidently assert the cause: "banks got really creative, a bunch of people made nice bonuses, then when their fancy leveraged mechanisms went bad, we all had to bail them out" without any details or refutation of the explanation I posted, to which you were responding...

Well, what I read was "I'm not sure what happened but I don't like it [rightfully so], and this narrative gives me an easy scapegoat -- an evil, shadowy figure, of sorts -- to blame, which seems to absolve me of needing to understand any of the mechanics involved, and which also happens to validate my pre-existing political beliefs."

Funny, I think the same thing about evil, shadowy scapegoats.

When we have a market crash caused by private actors trading and someone says "OBVIOUSLY the problem is GOVERNMENT" I think they're arguing backwards from ideology rather than working forwards from observation.

Indeed, which is why I made sure to include something different: the technical analysis and mechanics of the issue.