When the U.S. housing bubble burst more than a decade ago, it brought the global economy to its knees. It turned out that the multiyear housing boom through the early 2000s was hiding skeletons. Homebuyers, driven by a fear of missing out on home price gains, were stretching themselves well beyond their financial means. And zealous lenders were giving out mortgages (or better put, subprime mortgages) to folks who historically wouldn’t have qualified. As that credit rushed in, it helped to drive the housing boom. However, as the housing market corrected, those bad loans created a foreclosure crisis that took many of the nation’s biggest financial firms, like Bank of America and Citigroup, to the brink.