Review

“Timely, considering the dramatic slump in the American housing market and the global credit crunch.”  —Planning magazine

Niagara of Capital: How Global Capital has Transformed Housing and Real Estate Markets, explains how the record flow of financial capital into the real estate markets over the last decade stimulated a world-wide explosion in housing production and prices, resulting in a dramatic change in the basic structure of household wealth in most nations, including the United States. Author, Anthony Downs provides a step-by-step analysis of the role easy capital played in generating this rise in household wealth, and examines how the availability of cheap money led to the proliferation of poorly underwritten and risky loans, leading to the collapse of the subprime market and the subsequent credit crunch and stock market decline. Along with the disintegration of the subprime market, Downs outlines other scenarios that could t (more…)