From Monthly Review, May 2000:"Home mortgages have now--through the expansion of equity loans and lines of credit, along with predatory lending--become inextricably intertwined with the crisis affecting consumer credit in general. Mortgage delinquencies are almost certain to rise in the near-term due to three factors: rising interest rates on adjustable-rate mortgages, the rapid growth of high-risk mortgages with downpayments of 10 percent or less, and an expansion of predatory or subprime lending within the home-secured lending market. According to Business Week (November 1, 1999), owner's equity as a percentage of residential real estate has dropped ten points since 1989, from 66 percent to 56 percent...A growing debt burned means increasing financial insecurity for most households. Real wage increases of a substantial nature are needed now, not so much to improve the standard of living of workers, but simply so that they can finance accumulated household debt that has risen perilously during the decades of stagnation and debt-financed recovery. See Monthly Review December 2008, at page 52.
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