Three forty minute segments of constant redundant repetition is too much time for me tonight.
The reason the banks had all this stuff to sell was because the Chinese were buying it in order for the Chinese to get rid of all the excess dollars they would receive for all their manufacturing.
After years of being in a trade surplus under Clinton, we almost immediately started a trade deficit under *W Bush. I think that trade deficit continues to this day.
The more we bought from China over and above what they bought from us, the more money China put into a safe place: the housing market. The more money that went into the housing market, the higher the value on the houses.
Add that the stock market took a dive as *W Bush was selected. Average Americans also saw the housing market as a safer investment.
This housing market rise continues until it broke. China said we had to get them out of this bubble market and give us treasury bonds instead. I don't know if it broke first with China demanding we make China's investment whole, or if China realized it was a bubble and when they pulled out of the housing market, the market suddenly crashed.
China then started to hold billions in our treasury that used to be held by Americans. The Federal Reserve also stopped reporting M3, which by other sources skyrocketed as the Fed took on an untold amount of the Chinese holdings. A part that would not show up in the debt.
Our visible debt up by over a trillion in one year, the last year of W* Bush. And, the next year, that continued as Obama, probably forced, had to infuse more cash into the system. (Obama has since reduced the deficit each year since he started.)
I would love to see some economists explain this.
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