It all began when Emperor Tiberius enforced a ceiling on interest rates, which caused a severe credit crunch, Tacitus relates in The Annals (book VI, 16-17). "Hence followed a scarcity of money, a great shock being given to all credit, the current coin too." This was of course followed by deflation of the sort we are seeing now in housing -- "a fall of prices, and the deeper a man was in debt, the more reluctantly did he part with his property, and many were utterly ruined." This is what business nowadays terms "distressed sales."
The rest, as they say, is history.
