The accumulation and the subsequent defaults on massive amounts of debt played a
fundamental role in the financial crisis. Since debt can be defined as present consumption at
the expense of future consumption, a debt based bubble “steals” a large amount of
consumption from the future and compress it in a short lapse of time. Bubbles, which are
nothing more that credit-driven booms, thus give wrong signals to the economy by misguiding
investment and capital accumulation processes since fundamentals are distorted and appear
more significant than they really are (Figure 3). More capital than required is accumulated in
activities related to the bubble, creating a hidden overcapacity linked to an artificially induced
peak in demand. In North America and a number of European countries the credit bubble
resulted in an overcapacity in residential and commercial real estate and created an artificial
level of consumption. For export-oriented economies, overcapacity took place in the setting of
production and distribution assets incited by the debt-derived growth of consumption taking
place because of asset inflation