EVERYONE in the political and banking spectrums had a hand in that.

Used houses go up in price and "value" when in reality they are a constructed thing which declines in condition as the years wear on. You look at what people were throwing money at and it was 80% the intangibles, 20% the mitigated cost of construction.

Nobody put a gun to anyone's head and told them to invest in those grouped mortgages. It was a game and everyone knew it. So what someone got a bad run at the poker table. They did not walk away did they? Did they decide to invest locally in solid brick and mortar manufacturing? How about any natural resource collection? Lazy "investors" who wanted to get paper shuffled for them for profit get to whine, yeah, go whine. Meanwhile the Chinese who have been making actual infrastructure investment are now getting to see the big payoff.

Those intangibles, insurance, compounded prior interest that a prior owner wants paid for in the selling price, permits, fees, profit margins, that's what people were paying for when they "bought" a house, but what people really wanted to "buy" was financial security and often freedom from landlords.

Once this big shakedown settles out, people who actually work for a living and or are self-productive will be able to buy/build affordable housing at affordable prices, but that means lots of $50,000 homes, not $50,000 homes with $250,000 price tags and 30 year payment plans.