Jack, I don't think it is just the aspect of borrow, borrow, borrow. In Canada we had the institution called CMHC (Canada Mortgage Housing Commission). Basically if you did not have 25% down for your mortgage then you could get insurance on your mortgage. It assumed you were going to put 10% down. So if you paid $590.00 a month for your payment there was lets say another $10.00 a month you paid for your insurance - so your monthly mortgage payment was $ 600.00 a month. Here in Canada, I understand you can get 40 year mortgages and 0% down. In the States I am sure you have the equivalent. It led to very inflationary practices.

Now the other side of the story you have the Institutional Funds who are expected to have greater and greater returns. With the negative commodity prices it has been harder and harder to get decent returns and funds took some bigger chances. From what I understand, some of those funds took chances on the financial sector which the US govt stepped into, when they did the bail outs of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. As things got rockier this week - their was the demand from consumers for redemptions out of these funds which forced some of the funds to cash investments and other funds cashed in their investments too. It certainly was a different week.

I will see if I can post some excerpts on that. It has been interesting reading.