The 2001 Recession Actually Was Really Bad News

I see that I have to disagree with Brad DeLong again. Brad wants to see the 2008 downturn as a uniquely bad event due to the overextension of credit and the ensuing financial collapse. I see it as overwhelmingly a story of a burst housing bubble and the resulting fallout in the real sector.

First off, in this piece Brad seems to want to attribute the worldwide downturn to the collapse of the housing bubble in the U.S. This seems more than a bit bizarre, since countries like Spain and Ireland...