A lot can be learned about the housing bubble economy from Arrested Development. For instance, this shot (of the Bluth family's model home) should be in history textbooks ten years from now:
It's a good picture of what the housing bubble looked like: exurban McMansions in completely unsustainable locations. Homes everywhere were overvalued, but pictures like this are a good reminder of how absurd the whole thing got on the bloated periphery. A lot of these McMansions are getting foreclosed on. Many of them were paid for with subprime and Alt-A loans. And all of them have rapidly lost much of their value, leaving their owners underwater (owing more than the home is worth).
Recently a few friends and I figured out that as the FIRE (Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate) sector collapses, the driving forces in our economy are now healthcare, entertainment, defense, gambling, and internet stalking (HEDGIS). Which is to say - in case you don't catch my drift - that our economy is a joke. Thirty years of atrocious policy have left us with no domestic capacity to produce anything. This is a serious problem.
But since it is a joke, we might as well have a laugh, and Arrested Development is a good way to get there.