Market's were overflowing with liquidity due to low rates and easy credit, and then the housing market securitization exploded to the upside, which then fed on itself and created it's own bubble. There was mass participation from all the major banks, and we saw real estate riches books in Barnes and Noble.
How does that compare to now? We've yet to see public securitization of these "overvalued" companies, and there's no outrigh participation by banks leading them to IPOs, at least not yet... there's GS raising capital for facebook but that's really it.
Yeah we could get all zerohedgey with respect to how the fed is pushing up assets, but the majority of capital is coming via public equities and commodities... and the participation really isn't there at the moment.