The cheap debt that powered the last boom disappeared quickly last summer, depriving buyout firms of their main source of financing.
The surge in oil was associated with the final mad months of the last boom.
"Remember the phantom room rents and inflated incomes used to get mortgages in the last boom?
Now, because securitizations financed a large part of the last boom, the cleanup process is more public than ever before.
That may be wishful thinking: in the last boom, wages started picking up as soon as unemployment fell to 8.5%.
In 2007, the last boom year, it spent less, relative to G.D.P., than Germany, the supposed paragon of fiscal discipline.
Andres Zapata was a young, inexperienced real estate investor at the end of the last boom, trying to flip houses.
"This smacks of the starchitect phenomenon during the last boom," said Jonathan J. Miller, the president of Miller Samuel, a property appraiser.
Alongside this, housing is now no more affordable than it was at the peak of the last boom.
Money Observer has been my primary teacher and I did fairly well in choosing funds until the last boom.
But if there was one thing the titans of the last boom did not buy it was German silver.
