Size of the Mortgage Problem

Bloomberg's chart of the day on Feb 12th showed the size of the mortgage problem quite nicely (click for bigger version):

U.S. home loans exceeded the total cash available in the country by $3 trillion at their peak, showing the size of the mortgage problem to be fixed," said Michael Shaoul, chief executive officer of Oscar Gruss & Son Inc.

While M2 might not be the best measure of money for this purpose, it certainly puts it into perspective.

HatTip: Alybaba in the comments of CalculatedRisk.