[cross-posted at NPR Check]

How would you complete the following sentence:

For nearly two years the US economy has been battered by a recession brought on by _________________.

I would guess most semi-informed people would mention the housing bubble and mortgage backed securities (unless you are so completely incompetent as to not know about the $8 trillion dollar housing bubble!). Somewhere in the discussion one would hope to hear about the sub-prime lending spree that hugely profited unscrupulous mortgage brokers and victimized many borrowers. Right?

I know we've seen The Big Picture visualize a trillion dollars, but here's another version in video form. From Mint:

To keep up to date on the bailout fuckery, check out ProPublica.

A long piece, in Rolling Stone. I won't try to, ahem, summarize him here, the work is very dense and any attempt to condense it I fear would leave out something important. Go and read, please.

While there are many factors that explained the “housing bubble”, one culprit is the “new home” industry itself, which stopped building “affordable” homes..

· Nationally, in the first quarter of 2005, 31,000 new homes priced under $125,000 were sold. In the first quarter of 2006, that number had declined to 18,000 homes, and by fourth quarter 2007 that number was down to 8,000.

· The number of new homes sold in the $125k-$249,999 range declined from 34,000 in first quarter 2005 to 26,000 in first quarter 2006, declining to only 14,000 by fourth quarter 2007.

· And for the $150k-$199,999 range, sales fell from 66,000 in first quarter 2005 to 57,000 in first quarter 2006, before plummeting to 33,000 by fourth quarter 2007.