Originally Posted by RustyC

The "real" economy of making things or inventing things didn't do well at all under Bush when you strip away the housing boom. People were using credit cards or borrowing against rising home values to fund better living standards that weren't being confirmed via wage increases. Some also bought into the idea that the stock market mattered more to their own well-being than their wages, even though their holdings weren't that large.

Now all of it has crashed at the same time and people are waking up to not being nearly as well-off as they had thought.