2008-05-19

See a parallel?

"When the collapse came, it was all the more drastic in the U.S.A. because in fact a lagging expansion of demand had been beefed up by means of an enormous expansion of consumer credit. [...] Banks, already hurt by the speculative real-estate boom which [...], loaded with bad debts, refused new housing loans orto refinance existing ones. [...] while (in 1933) nearly half of all U.S. home mortgages were in default abd a thousand properties a day were being foreclosed."

Erik Hobsbawn, The Age of Extremes, on the 1929 crisis.

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