Also sprach Analyst   How big was the US housing bust, really?
4 May, 2012, 11:34. Posted by  By Walter Kurtz, Sober Look
Goldman recently completed a thorough study on housing busts
around the world and throughout history. The study covered the
time period since 1890 for some dozen "developed" economies
(including for example the US housing bust of the 1920s). The
idea was to assemble statistics on the pre and post-bust
economic trends. That in turn allowed them to gauge what was or
was not typical about the US 2007 housing bust.  In general the
study found that after the bust, the economy experiences the
following trends:  1. The GDP growth is sluggish for a prolonged
period 2. High unemployment and relatively high output gap
persists 3. Double-dip recessions are not common 4. The private
sector deleverages while the public sector leverage increases 5.
Interest rates remain low for a long time 6. Stock returns are
modest, consistent with slow GDP growth  Based on these
findings, it turns out that in gene