[quote=FormerSanDiegan]I believe that the past few years are a pretty good indicator of how asset price deflation can hurt the economy.[/quote]

IMHO, what we’ve seen the past few years is how **too much leverage and speculation** can hurt the economy. The damage was done on the way up, not the way down.

It’s not falling prices that caused our problems, it’s the defaults that resulted from overleveraging and too much unsustainable debt that caused our problems.