The question is, was 2008 a housing bubble, or a banking scandal?

The market didn't become too much for consumers or sellers, overloading and resulting in rapid price deflation (eg. A bubble popping).

Instead Banks were doing dodgy accounting so that poor people were getting loans they shouldn't have been eligible for.

In fact, maybe we should have legalized some of what the banks were trying to do. Poor people getting a chance to buy the worst homes, the banks facing costs and fuss if they can't pay up. The burden of the housing crisis should be shifted a bit more onto banks and billionaires.

Did you not think that that’s the point I’m making? The housing crisis never ended. The bubble didn’t pop. Houses are more expensive now then they ever were.

The cyclical economy has been a thing since economics started.

John Maynard Keynes proposed that we should tightening spending and save for a rainy day in boom times (taking money out of cycle), and splurge and spend to stimulate the economy when times were bad (flowing money into the dry cycle to top it up)... He thought the government should make those two counter moves happen. Make people save when times were good, and give them stimulus to spend when times were bad... Because it would smooth out the cycle and make markets and society appear more stable.

In practice whilst we can sometimes do the 'stimulus' part, businesses still tend to over spend in boom times, making the highs and lows worse.

Often society will vote in right wing austerity rulers when a crash happens, rulers who will cut services when the economy goes bust (starving the economy further rather than stimulating spending).

So the human inclination to save money when times are hard (keeping money out of cycle), and over spend when times are good (putting money in when they could afford to save for a rainy day) - is difficult to avoid.

Okay. Neat. Still waiting for it to pop.