We're Just Not Getting It

So I checked up on an old chart of mine that needed updating and that was what percent of the total mortgage were people taking additional cash out. Normally this amount hovered around 5% in the 1990's. Then the refinance boom and housing scandal occurred and people used their appreciating property values as a substitute for working for a living, driving this ratio up to about 30%.

Now one would think that with all the hubbub and hoola going on about the housing market and prices actually decreasing, we Americans would get it through our skulls that you just can't live off of perpetually increasing property prices and that inevitably we'd have to do what our forefathers did and that was work hard, thus driving this ratio down.

You would think.

And we wonder why the dollar is tanking.