Dave writes: “Many observers trade [should be “trace”] the trigger for the crisis – the collapse of the U.S. housing market – to the U.S. Federal Reserve's steady ramping up of interest rates in the two years prior to the housing downturn.” Agree to disagree. The US Federal funds rate was at 3% in September 2001 and was dragged way down in response to the 9/11 atrocities. It didn’t get back to 3% until May 2005, when housing prices were rising by 14% annually, and had been rising by double digits at least since 2014. This was much too late. The US Fed wasn’t an inflation targeting central bank then; so far as it implicitly targeted an inflation rate, it was at least 2%, where something lower would have been better monetary policy; and it didn’t include housing prices in its preferred inflation measure, PCEPI. Arguably, none of these defects have gone away, not even the first one. Unarguably the third defect hasn’t been addressed at all. Wake up and smell the coffee, Dave!