I lived in south Florida close to 20 years ago. One day at a street festival, I'd say in 2006, there were several teams of attractive young women handing our brochures for zero-down mortgage loans.

I'd been made the offer to buy homes several times in the preceding year, despite having an unstable low-wage job at the time and no savings to speak of.

Even back then, when I didn't pay nearly as much attention to this stuff, I knew the market was not far from collapse. Sure enough...