Trickle down on steroids.

Their eternal ripoff schtick

The wealthiest need ALL of the wealth.

yes some of the shenanigans came to light in 2008, but panic started in 2006. I was doing taxes for very affluent people (mostly low end millionaire small business types). The were all moving money around like crazy in 2006 and incorporating if they hadn't already so all the debts would shift to the business.

that did foreclosures among other things. They were not connected with any of the big banks or finance companies, but it was very clear by the end of 2006 that the housing market was in deep doo-doo. It was so frustrating to see people who absolutely should have known better, make truly dumb decisions about buying a house. And it's not as though this is the first time something like that has happened. In the late 80's it was "creative financing" that screwed people.

My husband and I were in the market to buy a home in 1988. The first one we signed a contract on involved a balloon payment some five years down the road. We decided we weren't comfortable with that. Yeah, he had a decent and stable job in IT, but who knew what things would be like in five years. So we went back to our realtor and told her we wanted out. We said we understood we'd probably lose the earnest money, but we were prepared for that. She actually re-sold that home in about two weeks, and for a higher amount that we'd agreed to. We got the earnest money back. Then bought a house that we could afford and felt much better about it.

I also recall in the mid-70s when people were having trouble buying because the banks just didn't have the money to lend. And if they did have the money, they didn't want to include a wife's income in calculating what they could afford.

These things are cyclical. Housing prices took a big hit in 2008 and in many places have only recently recovered. I well recall the dot-com bubble of the late 90s. And so on.

I think a huge problem is that history is not well taught in our schools, the news media operates in a vacuum, almost never referring to what came before, or explaining how something got this way, and economics is not taught at all in high school, and most college students never take an econ course. So our collective ignorance is vast.

One of my relatives works with real estate and she says everyone's just waiting for the next one to come hitting back soon.

The Republicans rob from those who work and give to those who manipulate (and feed the campaign chests). Simplification of the tax code is newspeak for lower the ceiling so more ultra rich can escape taxes that the middle class has to pay. Examining entitlements is a kinder, gentler way of shredding the social safety net, while sending the leftover proceeds over the top of that ceiling to those who need it least, and making sure that those who fail to be as productive as expected will quickly fall into an economic dungeon, lose any ability to afford the wealth care system, and disappear from notice. Deregulation makes certain that those above the taxation ceiling will suffer little interference from society while devising more creative, and quite likely destructive, ways to further exploit the increasingly powerless and desperate worker drones below that ceiling. Parasites continue until the host dies.

Naturally, after Democrats revive the host yet again, they will be blamed for the diseases brought on by the parasites.

How long before voters stop voting to be trickled on?

It absolutely ruined me, and my career is long gone.

And as usual the adults will have to do the hard work while the GOP crooks skate....