I suggest a topic on what the collapse of the housing bubble means for the future global financial order. The US mortgage securitization model has failed, and faith in the titans of Wall Street and government has been shaken. What does this mean for macro trends like globalism? What can we learn from past real estate busts, and will the price decline continue to steamroll everything in its path?

From The Star. "The world economy has seen globalization collapse once already. The gold standard era - with its free capital mobility and open trade - came to an abrupt end in 1914 and could not be resuscitated after World War I. Are we about to witness a similar global economic breakdown?"

"There was a time when global elites could comfort themselves with the thought that opposition to the world trading regime consisted of violent anarchists, self-serving protectionists, trade unionists and ignorant, if idealistic youth. Meanwhile, they regarded themselves as the true progressives."

"But that self-assured attitude has all but disappeared, replaced by doubts, questions and skepticism."

"The subprime mortgage crisis has shown how lack of international co-ordination and regulation can exacerbate the inherent fragility of financial markets. Even those who have not lost heart often disagree vehemently about the direction in which they would like to see globalization go."

"The first three decades after 1945 were governed by the Bretton Woods consensus - a shallow multilateralism that permitted policy-makers to focus on domestic social and employment needs while enabling global trade to recover and flourish."

"This regime was superseded in the 1980s and 1990s by an agenda of deeper liberalization and economic integration. That model, we have learned, is unsustainable."

The Nation. "The US Congress on Wednesday passed a wide-ranging housing rescue plan to help ease the downward spiral in the property market that is weighing heavily on the US economy. Mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac account for about half of the $12 trillion US housing market. They have issued some $5 trillion in mortgage-backed securities. Of this, $1.5 trillion is subscribed by foreign institutions such as the central banks of China and Japan."

"Loan defaults are now becoming common among those with good credit records. Bank and financial stocks have fallen by almost 70 per cent since last year."

"It is a bit odd that the bill aims to help homeowners keep their homes. The question is if people can't afford to pay for their homes, why bother? US mortgage lenders have been committing a grave financial sin by offering loans to Americans, who have poor credit and couldn't afford to pay for their homes in the first place."

"This reckless lending spree went on with the illusion that the prices of the US housing market would climb forever. It is an American dream to own a home. But the American dream can't be realised by irregular wage or salary earners with poor credit records."

The Dallas Morning News. "The economy collapsed after years of growth. Can't-miss investments turned to dust. And banks, gorged on years of aggressive lending, careened toward the breach. A portrait of today's U.S. economy? Time will tell."

"But with analysts predicting as many as 300 U.S. bank failures in the next few years, many Texans will recall another banking crash. In the state's 1980s collapse, an energy bust and a subsequent real-estate wreck leveled hundreds of Texas banks, including longtime pillars of the economy."

"More than 1,600 U.S. banks - 9 percent - failed between 1980 and 1994, involving assets worth $200 billion, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. The even larger savings and loan debacle from the same period claimed more than 1,000 institutions with assets of more than $500 billion."

"'The good news is that I can talk to you about the '80s without my shrink next to me,' jokes Dick Evans, CEO of San Antonio-based Cullen/Frost Bankers Inc., the only one of the era's top 10 Texas banks to survive the crisis. 'It was tough getting over it.'"

"Gerard Cassidy recalls living through the 1980s Texas bust as a 'young and naïve' bank analyst with an insurance company that had a large exposure to Texas banks. 'I believed them hook, line and sinker, everything the banks told me,' says Mr. Cassidy. 'And we went down with the ship.'"

"Out of the ruins, Mr. Cassidy developed his own way of gauging how likely a bank was to fail, dubbing it the 'Texas Ratio.' Two months ago, Mr. Cassidy told MarketWatch that IndyMac Bancorp Inc. had a worrisomely high Texas Ratio."

"IndyMac went bust this month in one of the largest bank failures in U.S. history. Mr. Cassidy believes the situation is less dire than in the early '90s. But a string of banking failures - even elsewhere - is sure to revive memories of the 1980s, when the state was today's housing bust, subprime mortgage mess and economic downturn rolled into one."

"Throughout much of the 1970s and early '80s, the state thrived on rising energy prices and served as a beacon to opportunity-seekers nationwide."

"'The entire country was looking at Dallas in awe,' recalls Jeff Chapman, a lawyer in Dallas with Vinson & Elkins LLP who started his career here in 1983. 'There was no city like it.'"

"The state's banks competed to finance energy and real-estate projects. Hundreds of new banks were chartered in Texas in the first half of the '80s. It all came crashing down amid a sustained decline in oil prices, a real-estate glut, and changes to U.S. tax law that made investing in real estate less attractive."

"'The state lost its swagger,' Mr. Chapman says. 'You didn't see many mansions being put up. The few-hundred-dollar bottles of wine remained in the restaurant inventories. I saw fewer brand new Porsches on the streets. And that's just at the wealth level.'"

"Things were even worse for everyone else, with widespread foreclosures and job loss, note Mr. Chapman and others who lived through it. 'Individuals' spirits were broken, their confidence was shattered, and they sank into despair and depression,' wrote Texas banker Joseph Grant, in his book The Great Texas Banking Crash: An Insider's Account."

"'It was not uncommon for the borrower, facing financial ruin, to break down in tears in the lender's office,' wrote Mr. Grant, who headed Fort Worth-based Texas American Bancshares Inc. when it failed in 1989."

"Texas banks recorded losses each year from 1986 to 1989, according to Bob Hankins, who oversees bank regulation at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. The state accounted for two-thirds of bank failures in the U.S. in 1988 and '89. Nine of the 10 largest Texas banks failed."

"'It was as close to a depression as anyone has seen in this country since the 1930s,' says Frank Anderson, a finance professor at the University of Texas at Dallas."

"Last year, Richard W. Fisher, president of the Dallas Fed, reflected on some of the lessons from 1980s Texas in a speech to mortgage bankers in Austin. 'The assumption of permanently high - or permanently rising - prices in an asset class, in this case oil, invariably leads to regrettable decisions,' he said."

"Today, the asset class that people once assumed to be 'permanently rising' is residential real estate."