What should we make of all this? As I noted at the outset, the more indebted we are - as individuals and in aggregate - the less resilient to adverse economic shocks we are, and the higher the potential vulnerability.
Similarly, it may well be that if central banks in some other Asian countries had not been so preoccupied with trying to avoid the appreciation of their currencies against the US dollar as capital flowed into these economies in the mid-nineties, their interest rates would have been higher and asset price inflation commensurately reduced.