Jerome a Paris:

I blame consumers, too (none / 0) what were they thinking, piling on all that debt? I know they have been pushed into it, and in some cases (like medical emergencies in the US) did not have a choice, but they can't evade completely their personal responsibility in spending beyond their means.

That's all very well, but you have been arguing (with dat to support it) that for the last 30 years US real wages have been stagnant (an 'attack on the middle class') and you have also argued that this pushed Americans to pile on debt (your counterargument to the Asian savings glut theory). Now, if you have to indebt yourself to acquire "the necessaries of life" (without which no self-respecting [middle-class] person can show themselves in public - see below) then whose fault is it, really?

Easy credit prevented things coming to a head earlier, but they would have and for the same reason - people will consume the culturally-determined "necessaries of life" whether or not this entails living above their means.

Project Gutenberg: Wealth of Nations

Consumable commodities are either necessaries or luxuries.

By necessaries I understand, not only the commodities which are indispensibly necessary for the support of life, but whatever the custom of the country renders it indecent for creditable people, even of the lowest order, to be without. A linen shirt, for example, is, strictly speaking, not a necessary of life. The Greeks and Romans lived, I suppose, very comfortably, though they had no linen. But in the present times, through the greater part of Europe, a creditable day-labourer would be ashamed to appear in public without a linen shirt, the want of which would be supposed to denote that disgraceful degree of poverty, which, it is presumed, nobody can well fall into without extreme bad conduct. Custom, in the same manner, has rendered leather shoes a necessary of life in England. The poorest creditable person, of either sex, would be ashamed to appear in public without them. In Scotland, custom has rendered them a necessary of life to the lowest order of men; but not to the same order of women, who may, without any discredit, walk about barefooted. In France, they are necessaries neither to men nor to women; the lowest rank of both sexes appearing there publicly, without any discredit, sometimes in wooden shoes, and sometimes barefooted. Under necessaries, therefore, I comprehend, not only those things which nature, but those things which the established rules of decency have rendered necessary to the lowest rank of people. All other things I call luxuries, without meaning, by this appellation, to throw the smallest degree of reproach upon the temperate use of them. Beer and ale, for example, in Great Britain, and wine, even in the wine countries, I call luxuries. A man of any rank may, without any reproach, abstain totally from tasting such liquors. Nature does not render them necessary for the support of life; and custom nowhere renders it indecent to live without them.

En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma