I really enjoyed reading Jon Talton’s column in the AZ Republic yesterday. I’ve included an interesting quote below. Jon does a very good job summarizing the whole reason why we’re in this fiasco today. Easy money from Asia to US Banks. After 9/11 the Feds made money so cheap that the nominal interest rate (the interest rate after inflation) back in early 2002 was negative. Meaning you were getting paid to borrow!
Can Phoenix avoid mimicking America if slowdown lasts?: “As former Labor Secretary Robert Reich wrote on his blog about the underlying forces, ‘This time, the out-of-control trend has been excess liquidity – so much easy cash all over the world (excess petro-dollars, excess sino-dollars, excess saving in the rest of Asia) that investors have been overly optimistic in lending money and buying stocks.”