Knowing what I know now, I can't help but wonder if bursting economic "bubbles" are the elites' way of punishing countries for doing too well without their permission, and are their way of taking us down a few pegs and leaving us worse off than before.
Let's use another country as an example.
A few weeks ago, I saw an anime called Gunbuster, released in 1988-89, for the very first time. You could easily tell it was riding high on the bubble economy the country was going through at the time--it is surging with national pride, background details saying that Japan has basically taken over the world through economic power rather than warfare. As was said in Die Hard, released that same year, "Pearl Harbor didn't work out, so we got you with tape decks."
But around 1992, the bubble burst, and Japan fell into a massive recession so hard, that country still has yet to fully recover from it.
Note that I am absolutely not an economist. Economics, especially macroeconomics, are absolutely waaaaay over my head--I have never been able to make much sense of them, which is one reason I'm making this topic. Apologies for any frustration this may cause.
Or maybe I just wanted an excuse to tie some great anime into our biggest enemies. Who knows.
Gunbuster is fantastic, by the way--it's only six episodes, and I cannot recommend it enough, including the excellent English dub that was finally made last year, cast completely by unknowns looking for their big break, and all of them knocked it out of the park. Don't look up clips, just watch it.
I dunno, not an economist either, but I believe there is more at play in massive downturns like that, than just the financial aspect:
Point being that the wound seems kinda self-inflicted, due to a hubris-filled central bank believing in the endlessly employed lever of: interest-rate-hikes as a solution to supposed real-estate 'bubbles'.
They definitely slowed down the overheating, right into negative territory, and for decades - I am sure.
IMO, the idea of controlling real estate bubblles, as if fiddling the CB interest rate can do that, is flawed. Many countries were at it: I 'member the dirty nineties, when interest rates soared to 18%, in NZ. And why? Something, something stock market collapse + real estate crash in 1988. But of course, there was that 18% mortgage LOLOL, so many people just walked off to live in buses.
In any case, people buy real estate on an emotional level, and in group-think systems, causing booms and busts, just like any market. If the pepes decide that sh*t is hitting the fan, then they stop buying. That psychological state can last for decades as younger generations adapt to not buying, and living with parents.
Japanese pepes voted with their feet, for a less harried lifestyle, maybe, without central bank moneys. Problem is, their birth-rate is abysmal. In the end one must be able calculate the societal damage of un-informed financial decisions, by entitled important dudes.
Real-estate speculators. Ugh.
Believe it or not, I can tie this into another anime. The late great Akira Toriyama hated them so much, he based Dragon Ball's Frieza on them.
Yeah, but taking a swipe at real estate speculators also affects mom-and-pop home-owners. That's the rub. One cannot paint those groups with the same brush - which is what raising interest rates does.
Still begs the question: Who ordered them to raise interest rates?
indeed, I think it was a group decision from the likes of WEF or Bilderberg or something 'high level' like that. What happens is that:those types of big 'Global' conferences, complete with all sorts of side-hustles, blackmail etc. and lavish meals, use think tanks to formulate their rounds of progressive speeches.
In the early nineties, Management theory, and by extension, Economics theory, as an academic pursuit rather than pop-psychology, was really still in it's infancy. The expectation was that computers would start a revolution in accuracy, consistency and efficiency. For example government literature of that time promoted the Three E's: Efficiency, Economics and Effectiveness. It was not until the early noughties that a Dutch Prof debunked those ideas as unmeasurable, and therefore unmanageable. Those ideas are ideological non-strategy. Of course everyone would like to save money, or make money as was the actual case.
they said.
Indeed each National government started flurries of law-writing to anticipate the accuracy of computers and to nail the laws down, and give everyone 'clear' guidelines.
However, most of the literature was actually derived from pop-culture, in it's aspiration and self-belief. One of the features of post-midcentury Modern reasoning, is to break things down into little boxes and rule on each individually. This gives the impression that one can leverage one single factor safely without dire consequences. So the idea at the time, was that one could control big social movements with tiny adjustments in say: interest rates. Nothing to see here.
Only in 1995 did 'qualitative' analysts (I see positivists start wrinkling their noses) started work on a more wholistic Systems Thinking that defined the Butterfly Effect so nicely for us.
My point is that when one changes society rapidly, as basically happened in the last forty years, with the advent of widely available computing, there is bound to be some psychopathic gameplay, but most were sleepwalking, as they tried to comprehend what just happened ?