Since the early 2000s the American economy had been buoyed not only by huge fiscal deficits but by a sustained surge in house prices. Now, in some of the most challenged neighborhoods in the country, tens of thousands of families who had recently taken out home loans were failing to make payments. In marginal ethnic minority communities in cities like Cincinnati and Cleveland, but also in ribbon developments in the sunshine states, mortgages were failing en masse. America’s housing market bull run was about to come to a juddering halt. And as it did so, it would precipitate a global crisis.
