Yeah but it was more then just NAFTA. The banks were running wild making loans to almost anybody with little or no money down. BOA was having robo signers on loans, nobody was looking at the paperwork and verifying if the info given was true or not.
The banks figured even if the buyer fails to make the payments, the bank has the home and can resell it--likely for more then the loan was for. Problem is too many bad loans went out and now we got too many homes for sale and resale value plunged.
That was just the tip of the iceberg, banks and insurance companies were engaging in fraud even. Where were the regulators ? GWB was the problem with that.
Didn't Canada also sign NAFTA....yep "The North American Free Trade Agreement or NAFTA is an agreement signed by the governments of Canada, Mexico, and the United States, creating a trilateral trade bloc in North America. The agreement came into force on January 1, 1994. It superseded the Canada United States Free Trade Agreement between the U.S. and Canada. In terms of combined GDP of its members, as of 2010 the trade bloc is the largest in the world"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement
Again, how come Canada is doing much better? How many banks do Canada have--like 3 or 4, where as the USA had hundreds of thousands of banks. Canada banks were/are far more regulated.
The EPA sure doesn't help either. China has no type of EPA what so ever. Business are free to do as they please, that helps keep costs down. Then we are told its all the USA high wages fault, not that the cost of making goods are far higher in the USA thanks to the EPA and OSHA.
Do I want child labor, no but do we really need to have every job set up so anybody--male, female, big or small--can do the job? That is how it is right now. Ford motor HAS to hire both male and females for its factory jobs. China has no such laws, if you can't lift 200 lbs, too bad, somebody else can. In the USA Ford has to provide the equipment so some 120 lb female can move the 200 lbs part around.
I could go on and on. Bring back the 1950's and lots of good things would happen. Obama is a dead end, his big goal was to allow openly gay folks in the Army, how nice. That is what change we got. Sure its nice to be fair to everybody but it comes with a price.