There is a lot of hand-wringing over consumer behavior here in the comments, but nobody is pointing out the extent that Wall Street is involved much like they w

There is a lot of hand-wringing over consumer behavior here in the comments, but nobody is pointing out the extent that Wall Street is involved much like they were in the Mortgage Crisis of 2008. > Yet for the auto industry, there was a silver lining: Interest rates had fallen to practically zero. Suddenly, it was much cheaper to finance a car. Loans made to buyers were snapped up by Wall Street investors looking for returns as income from supersafe Treasurys drifted toward zero. > The combination of rock-bottom rates and yield-hungry investors helped bring the U.S. auto industry back to life. By 2015, auto sales had reached records. > Low rates, in effect, served as a bailout for the entire auto industry. Last year, investors bought a record $107 billion of bonds backed by cars, according to the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, a trade group. That is the first issuance record since 2005 and nearly triple the amount two decades earlier. The outstanding pile of auto bonds swelled to a record $264 billion. > So far this year, dealerships made an average of $982 per new vehicle on finance and insurance versus $381 on the actual sale, according to J.D. Power, a data and analytics company. A decade earlier, financing brought in $516 per car and the sale made dealers $837. > Finance managers at dealerships typically use an electronic portal to hash out the terms of the loans. On the other end are various financial institutions that buy up the loan pretty much as soon as the dealer closes the deal. So the entire incentive structure flipped to reward financing rather than purchase in the last decade. It's no wonder that dealerships are increasing the terms of loans. Banks are snatching them up and putting them into securities practically sight unseen while the debt just keeps piling on. We can talk about consumer behavior all day, but did behavior really change over the last several decades (specifically since the 2008 Crash) or are other factors driving this like Wall Street types starving for yield? Looks like we're watching the highly anticipated sequel.