Most notable about stagflation is increasing prices despite increasing unemployment. In this scenario, it appears that for people to survive, decreasing income can cause a need for increasing credit to meet the increasing prices.

1) Can this be what really caused so many marginal mortgage payers (whose mortgage rates increased and increased their mortgage payments beyond their means to pay them) to experience lenders foreclosing on their properties?

2) Is it stagflation which can continue and so erode credit availability that the entire economy will go bust?

3) If the stagflation picture continues, will entrepreneurship be so rare that American democracy (so dependent on capitalism, seemingly not the other way around) becomes American socialism or worse?

4) Are there greater terrors to be conquered than terrorism?

What stagflation is in the US? The impression is that a fairly narrow, if important,selection of products have risen sharply e.g oil,some foodstuffs, but that overall there is no stagflation.

Your house prices haven't inflated recently, that's certain

FredPuli: I tried to fool you, but you realize that what went up also went down. The same thing happened to the oil prices, but utilities and rents are way up and increasing. Food prices went up and are still rising product by product.