In this article, Michael Hudson stated that many Americans have gone so deeply into debt so willingly. This got to the point where debt has come to equal with wealth, and even freedom, in the odd logic of the real estate bubble. Economic rent has become a double-edged solution where some particular real estate bubble has been carefully ruling home buyers with easy money as the bait. This trapped home buyers with fewer choices and far from what has been promised of “economic freedom”. Home buyers will spend their lifetime working to pay off the debt that absorbs every spare penny.

Here are 20 key points of the upcoming real estate collapse:

1. Mortgages account for most of the net growth in debt since 2000
2. A $1,000 monthly payment can carry different levels of debt
3. Interest rates have been falling since 1981
4. Corporations hide their real estate profits behind depreciation
5. The tax burden has shifted from property to labor and consumption
6. Real estate prices have far outpaced national income
7. Capital gains are taxed at a lower rate than ever
8. Housing prices have far outpaced consumer prices, even as monthly payments remain affordable
9. Mortgage debt is rising as a proportion of the GDP
10. The production/consumption economy
11. The Keynesian economy
12. The FIRE economy
13. The miracle of compound interest
14. The rentier economy
15. Rich people are getting a bigger share of overall economic rent
16. The miracle of compound interest will inevitably confront the s-curve of reality
17. In Japan, real estate prices fell as quickly as they rose
18. Interest rates are on the rise
19. The annual sale if existing homes has more than doubled since 1989
20. Negative equity traps debtors

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