[Image Source: https://astutestrategist.com/home/financialcrisis_v4/]
I really enjoyed watching “The Housing Bubble” film! It’s really interesting learning about the 2008 Financial crisis because it’s in that weird time period where I was alive and mildly aware of what was happening around me (I was 8 years old) but that was so out of my expertise and depth that I did not truly understand what was happening when it was going down. I have heard so much about it to, with so many adults talking about it pretty much my entire life and I have learned about it in some of my economic classes and even some of my political science classes and it makes it seem so distant and a one-off thing, but this video really brought up some important points that really make it and the possibility (or inevitability) of another one.
I appreciated the fact that the documentary brought in many experts, like Peter Schiff and David Stockman (just to name a few), and I really liked how they explained why the bubbles popped up and where they came from. The way that they talked about and explained things really made sense to me. The biggest thing I really respected and like about it was how nonpartisan it was and how it addressed the mistakes that the government as a whole made, no matter what party, and that a lot of the mistakes made were repeats from lessons not learned. Peter Schiff in particular gave a really good interview for the documentary and had some really good points to make. He talked about how the beginning of the crisis started way back in the beginning of the 2000s with the issue with the stock market and it was from that he could tell what was going to happen next. He went into the specifics of the problems in the real estate business and how people were buying houses with money they did not have. That sentiment, the whole “people using money they did not actually have” is something that was really emphasized to me when anyone talked about the 2008 crisis and I could not really wrap my head around that idea but this documentary did such a good job of explaining it to me and how this bubble, in the housing, was getting worse and worse. Hindsight is 20/20 and all that jazz but having Peter and what he was saying (which is what everyone has been since 2008) juxtaposed with people dismissing and ridiculing him was alarming. It really brought to my attention how dismissive people are towards experts and issues until it is literally too late, sort of like the pandemic now. It was also kind of scary hearing him talk about how history is being repeated just over a decade later and that the same signs are lighting up, except maybe worse, and that we are heading towards another financial crisis that could be just as bad, or a lot more bad, than what happened in 2008.
I thought it was absolutely insane that there are economics that have been able to predict every major crash in the United States. When they started talking about that I was like, wow, because I am very much not an economic person, I do not know how the stock market works, but the fact there are people who understand it so thoroughly is very impressive to me. I will say though, as impressed as all of it made me, it definitely also stressed me out about the future and the problems we will be facing soon enough. The fact that there are people who can predict this and advise on ways to prevent crises and yet we still continue to stay on the same track without doing anything to change is so bizarre and freaky. I do get government so when they were talking about policy and the unfortunate nuances involved, I can see the inevitability and the lack of change within the actual body of government. Overall, an incredible documentary and I really enjoyed watching and learning from it! One of the better documentaries I’ve watched and I really liked that the director was into painting houses right before everything ruptured, that is such a fun little connection to everything.