Bloomberg Businessweek

April 26, 2012, Thursday

Bloomberg Businessweek (full article)

The First Time Mortgage-Backed Securities Failed

By Louis Hyman
During World War I, as cities pulled every young man who wasn't a doughboy into their factories, the U.S. became an urban nation.

After the war, there was a sharp and short depression in 1920 from which the cities quickly recovered, but rural America did not. That year, the census recordeed more people living in cities than in the country. Returning soldiers looked for work in the cities rather than return home. And all those people needed somewhere to live.