Probably not a coincidence

This looks like a boring chart from the Economist and, well fuck,  it is.  But the first column bascially tells the story of an international financial crisis.   Look at the trade inbalance in the first four countries listed, China, Japan, U.S. and Britain.   When we run a deficit of hundreds of billions of dollars with places like China and Japan while they're running a surplus of hundreds of billions then it means all that currency needs  to be  laundered or "invested" by the surplus countries.   Hello American real estate market.

That's where the cash comes from to fund a market run up that magically makes your piece of shit condo worth $70,000 more than you paid for it in 18 months. It wasn't the paint or curtains.  So the next time some asshole on TV tries to demagogue some poor shmuck who got caught trying to flip an insanely overpriced property keep in mind that the Finance Minister of China was doing essentially the same thing except he made money.