Most people, and most experts, tend to feel that the US economy is in trouble. Many news stories are a significant part of this: the subprime mortgage “crisis”, the falling value of the dollar, the restatements of financial earnings from Wall Street. But the actual narrative of how this happened is very poorly understood, and rarely explained in its entirety. And much information which contradicts what we think we know exists as well: that subprime mortgages represent less than 2% of the equity market, for example, or that over half of subprime borrowers are still making timely payments.
Due to the failure of most Americans to understand the narrative of how we got here, most of us don’t understand what the problems actually are, nor do the politicians vying to “solve” the problems feel the need to address the actual underlying issues. It is my feeling that it is therefore important to try to tell the story of how we got here in a narrative fashion.