'better' is a funny word. Like I said in another post, it's due to a 'banking' revolution called 'shadow bank' (they aren't bank, they cannot print nor destroy money, but I guess it's close enough). From what I saw, its main effect is to decorelate GDP from production. A house sold 200k can produce 400k of GDP over a year if enough intermediaries put their hand in the pie. And I'm just talking about the mortgage here, not the house.