Housing loans in Japan have been increasing steadily even under the current financial crisis. The problem is its profitability. According to the Bank’s analysis, the profitability of Japanese financial institutions’ housing loans has been consistently declining recently.
I especially like the historical sweep including the well-detailed comparison and contrast of the late 19th Century “gilded age” with the more recent “age of financialisation”. (We didn’t have much of a “gilded age” in Ireland, but we did have “financialisation” with a vengeance cf. O Riain, 2014).