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Reader question: Please explain this sentence: “Nobody raised any red flags about a housing bubble until 2001.” Red flags? My comments: What red flags, you wonder? Here, raising red flags is a metaphor. In other words, nobody raised any real red flags (such as the red flag of China). All they did was giving a warning signal. They didn’t do that of course. Sorry, this is getting a little confusing. Let’s do it again. “Nobody raised any red flags about a housing bubble until 2001” means this: A housing bubble was brewing but nobody saw it as a great threat coming. Either they didn’t see it at all or they didn’t see it as a bubble that may burst in their face any time soon. Therefore nobody gave any warnings about it until 2001 – when it was too late. The housing bubble (in America) worked like this: Banks kept giving mortgage loans to anyone who wanted it whether they could afford it or not. Banks kept doing this because one, people really wanted a home of their own, which is understandable; two, there was, well, is a commission to be made whenever a deal is cut. Which is understandable also, of course, to some extent. Well, not getting into the rights and wrongs of it on the part of the banks, the long and short of it is, people who could not really afford it began to own homes via mortgage, or sub-mortgage. Because the mortgage or sub-mortgage loans became readily available, everybody got on the bandwagon and wanted to buy a house for themselves. That created a greater demand for houses, which in turn inflated housing prices. | 
