Thanks Palm, that's a handy link. 
Numbers for reqs % base match with the the 26% and 6% you were posting, and the drop in reserve reqs came with an increase in mortgages % home value from 33% in '75, to the current 47%. It's like you were saying about a req drop and an "increase in debt".
More or less. What happened for the first dozen years was that debt parallel tracked req% --they dropped and went up together. It wasn't until '87 when real estate laws changed (S&L scandal) when they diverged. Hard to prove a total cause and effect.
What's more important here is the question of financial responsibility. We're not worse off now than we were in the late '70's, and inflation/interest rates are far more under control now. We're also in a much more prudent position with debt now, even with mortgages increasing by a factor one and a half times. The reason is that our real incomes have gone up just as much, and our real equities have doubled.
