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  Mark - Sorry but what drove the credit boom and bubble was the way interest rates were kept down too low for too long. It was a direct response to that. Brown made a complete cock-up of his inflation brief to the Bank of England and compounded that by de-incentivising savings and investment.
  
  To a larger part the house buying price boom was driven by Buy to Lets, people using property as a means of investment. This was not the cleverest of strategies and many have lost out lately.
  
  If people could not afford the mortgages they were taking out then that is a failure of advice and, yes, some of that and perhaps most of it was from the banks. I suspect though, from experience, that the extent of that poor advice is a lot less than you portray and for many people those mortgages were and are a lot cheaper than rent.
  
  You talk about the bundling of debt again. As long as the debt being bundled and sold is transparent and is properly rated for risk then it is no problem and is an important part of global financial transactions. A lot of people utilise debt funds run by people like Paul Causer for an reasonably good flow of income to supplement their pensions. This is very tax efficient in a Stocks and Shares ISA by the way and in a portfolio comprising of such funds and equity offers a decent income flow with long term capital growth potential. I am obtaining net income yields of around 5% in portfolios without taking excessive risk. In suspect yields will be dropping a little though in response to QE so I must re-appraise strategies accordingly. Such portfolios have weathered these economic times relatively well as one client found out yesterday. You are far too dismissive of something based on some criminal activity and I suspect it is a problem of a little knowledge but not enough.
  
  Back to mortgages. If wise these people would have been overpaying like mad on their mortgages to reduce the capital owed while the going is good and many have been doing just that, particularly since the 'crunch'. Figures do reflect that this is being done which perhaps shows that there is a lot of good advice going on it in the real world.
  
  The banks are far from innocent but it is wrong to use them to cover up the full extent of Labour's 13 years of mad fiscal and monetary policy.

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