When the neoliberals in the 1980s deregulated banking to allow commercial bankers to issue fiat finance toward ANY purpose, instead of solely productive ones, they opened the floodgate for the misuse of fiat debt monetary issuance on a grand scale. Since then house prices (and rents) have escalated, and at the same time the quantity of finance provided toward productive purposes has plummeted.

Why the would a commercial bank issue funding to a commercial venture where there is some risk when they can issue funding to a house where there is almost zero risk? And so today most funding issued via fiat by the for profit banks is toward housing and this is a gross misuse of fiat monetary principles but it goes on unremarked upon because it was cloaked in the immaculate disguise of 'deregulation'. The entire western world is mired in debt including student loans- the commodification of higher education has led to a fundamental change in our culture.

Once it was that nations would invest in their brightest citizens - those who aspired to a higher education- and that investment on balance paid dividends- but today under the 'market forces' neoliberal mantra of 'user pays' education has been commodified and financialized and the primary winners in this are the rentseeking usurers and the education providers who have dumbed down their programs to maximize their profits.