A housing bubble book which explains why things happened, not just what people did. Shows how houses with a mortgage changed from a debt to an ATM machine, creating an investment with high rate of return and zero risk. This investment attracted investment capital away from wealth creating investments and toward wealth consumption, making the economy much poorer. Shows how this effect caused all of the "predatory lending", feckless regulation, and improvident bail outs. Housing bubbles cannot be controlled or regulated, but must be prevented from occurring. Wall Street, and the few investors who made billions when the bubble burst did not have any idea about what was going on, or about why things happened as they did. Shows precisely what it was that caused the most recent housing bubble to end. Traces the history and causes of all three housing bubbles. Explains CDOs, CDSs, and Synthetic CDOs.