There is one thing always confused me: People always say that financial crisis destroyed trillions dollar worth of wealth

Based on general economy definition, only consumable goods and services are wealth, money is just a medium of exchange. So, if a house used to worth 5 million now worths 3 million, the actual wealth (the house) do not change, it is just the price of the house changed, and I think this price change are mainly caused by two things: money supply and people's desire

In my opinion, only war or natural disaster can really destroy wealth massively, any kind of financial loss is just a illusion, since people mistakenly think that money is wealth

The real question is: The country as a whole did not lose any wealth in the financial crisis, but why many people are getting poorer and the real tangible and consumable products are getting less produced?

Think about the Great Depression. One day everything was going along fine - everybody was pretty wealthy and had plenty to eat - and the next day, suddenly, everybody was in poverty. What happened? Had the farms disappeared? Had the cows vanished into thin air? Had the fish of the sea ceased to exist? Had human beings lost their energy, their skills, and their brains? No. This is what happened: On the morning after the beginning of the Depression, a carpenter came to work, and the foreman said to him, 'Sorry, chum, you can't work today. There ain't no inches.'

The carpenter said, 'What do you mean, there ain't no inches?'

'Yeah,' the foreman said. 'We got lumber, we got metal, but we ain't got no inches.'

'You're crazy,' the carpenter said.

And the foreman replied, 'The trouble with you is you don't understand business.'

What happened in the Great Depression was that human beings confused money with wealth. And they didn't realize that money is a measure of wealth, in exactly the same way that inches are a measure of length. They think it is something that is valuable in and of itself. And as a result of that they get into unbelievable trouble.