2007-08 Recession

Similarly, the Great Recession was due to consumer spending cutbacks and a drop in demand for the establishment of new housing. In the two decades previous to 2008, the American growth rate was very high. Their household needs also became very high, which made demand increase. Spending was at a high. However personal income was decreased. The consumers then had to borrow money from the banks. This gave the consumers debt. So, when the house prices rose, banks stopped loaning money to people and the people decreased their spending. This happened because the people were not able to pay the banks back. People also cut back on buying or making new houses, so household demand dropped. Many say that this decrease caused the Great Recession. Housing was one of the main subjects that many believe, caused the Great Recession. “Subprime” mortgage availability and low interest

Later the same day, the Bank of America announced that it would be purchasing Merrill Lynch.

The recession of 2008 is also called the ‘Great Recession’, said to have begun in December 2007, and took a turn for the worse in September 2008, and it was a severe economic problem expanded globally. This recession affected the world economy, and is said to have been the worst financial disaster since the Great Depression. The decline in the Dow Jones this time was -53.8%. Since the official start of the recession in December 2007, and through June 2010 there have been about 2.3 million homes foreclosed in the United States. In 2012, the state with the most foreclosures in January alone was California, with 51,584 houses being repossessed. Unemployment during this collapse was 8.5%, and continued to increase to about 10% as of 2010. People’s reaction to this recession was a huge decrease in spending and borrowing from banks, but an increase in saving.

Problems for home owners with good credit surfaced in mid-2007, causing the U.S.'s largest mortgage lender, Countrywide Financial, to warn that a recovery in the housing sector was not expected to occur at least until 2009 because home prices were falling "almost like never before, with the exception of the Great Depression." Most economists agree that the primary cause of the current recession was the credit crisis arising from the bursting of the housing bubble. Why did the housing bubble occur and why did its bursting cause such a severe and widespread recession?

During the great recession era that began in late-2007 and lasted until mid-2009, the labor market took a major loss. The reasons that caused the labor market to plummet during this time frame were due to unemployment, a decrease in income and lack of education. Despite the efforts from the government to help as much as possible, the labor market had taken the worst hit and was at its lowest since the last three decades. It is important for everyone to understand what a weak labor market can result in. In this paper, I will discuss these findings and what impact they had on the labor market to weaken it to such a low point.

The Great Recession inflicted abundant harm in the U.S. and global economy; 8.7 million jobs vanished (Center on Budget), 9.3 million Americans lost their homes (Kusisto), and the U.S. GDP fell below what the economy was capable to produce (Center on Budget). The financial crisis was unforeseen by millions and few predicted that the market would enter a recession. Due to the impact that the recession had, several studies have been conducted in order to determine what caused the recession and if it could have been prevented. Government intervention played a key role in the crisis by providing the bailout money that saved those “Too Big to Fail” institutions. Due to the amount of money invested in the bailout and the damage that the financial crisis had on the U.S. population, “Too Big to Fail Banks”, and financial regulation are two of the biggest focuses of the presidential candidates. Politicians might assure voters that change will occur, but is it to late for change to be efficient, are the financial institutions making the same mistakes that led to the financial crisis?

The “Great Recession of 2008" hit The United States and the rest of the world with a force not seen since the Great Depression less than a century ago. December of 2007 saw an unemployment rate of 5.7% as the economy was rolling forward on the back of the high-profiled housing market funded by aggressive loans to consumers with sub-par credit. (National Bureau of Economic Research) This created a proverbial “House of Cards” that fell apart that same month and over the course of two years; the unemployment rate would nearly double as The United States would lose over 8 million jobs according the National Bureau of Economics. The cause of The Great Recession can’t simply be quantified to just one person, agency or company. However, in the broad

The Great Recession, December 2007 through June2009 marks an unstable 18 months for the United States’ economy, that countless amounts of people won’t forget. The housing and bank markets during the recession were not recouping much money off loans and low interest rates, which cause both markets to nearly crash. This caused many Americans to lose their jobs and the unemployment rates to reach the highest numbers since the Great Depression. But ever since 2009, the economy has been an on slow but steady track up to being what it once was.

A variety of events led to the event that would be known as the Great Recession. Blame is shifted around between the large Wall street banks, the federal government giving loans with very low to zero interest rate, and investors desperately wanting something to invest in. The large Wall street banks are to blame the most, as everything leads back to them. The origin starts of the recession starts earlier, in the late 90’s and early 2000’s.

The main reason for the crisis was a boom and bust in the housing markets at the same time. Home values rose rapidly during the beginning of the 2000’s. Many homeowners used their homes and other assets to withdraw equity to produce add-ons to the house, such as kitchens, decks, or patios. Once the value of the houses went down, they could not pay off this extra debt. Homes were beginning to be valued at less than what the homeowners owed on them. This period was powered by leverage, securitization, and structured finance. Housing was a hot commodity at that time, and Americans were taking out hefty loans in order to pay for them. There was a rise in self-employment at that time, and borrowing money was very relevant at that time. Adjustable rate mortgages, which provided initial interest rates and low monthly payments were the most common form of loans between 2004 and 2008. The banks were not careful in their securitization of loans, and a lot of loans defaulted. The defaults mainly revolved around the failing of the housing market. At the time, there was low requirements for down payments on houses. Lenders were only asking for approximately 3%, today it is up around 10% (Golub). This allowed for more and more people to put a down payment on a house, who would not be capable of paying the banks back. During this time, there was a dramatic increase in sub-prime lending, which means that the people borrowing the money had lowering credit

The Great Recession of 2008 was the most devastating recession since the Great Depression itself. To further investigate what caused this, we interviewed our mother Marianne Massinger. She has worked in the finance industry for many years now, and she was able to witness and experience the effects of the recession personally. Overall, the information found through our research on the Recession of 2008 closely lined up with the accounts given by our mother.

A recession is full-proof sign of declined activity within the economic environment. Many economists generally define the attributes of a recession are two consecutive quarters with declining GDP. Many factors contribute to an economy's fall into a recession, but the major cause argued is inflation. As individuals or even businesses try to cut costs and spending this causes GDP to decline, unemployment rate can rise due to less spending which can be one of the combined factors when an economy falls into a recession. Inflation is the general rise in prices of goods and services over a period of time. Inflation can happen for reasons such as higher energy and production costs and that includes governmental debt.

This financial crisis and bursting of the US housing bubble prompted a wider recession. Due to the credit crunch, there was less available credit for consumers and businesses. There also began to be restrictions on lending- since banks went bankrupt there was a reduction in bank’s lending in the first place and bank lending went down to just over $10 billion.

This recession was a combination of the United States recession, that lasted from December of 2007 to approximately June of 2009, and the global recession in 2009 that proceeded. The recession in the United States was a result of the banks’ inability to pay off their accumulated debt. It all began when there were housing booms, which involved mortgage-backed securities (MBSs), or stocks backed by mortgages. Due to the real estate market collapse in 2007, those securities declined in value and jeopardized solvency, or “the ability of a company to meet its long-term financial obligations”, of banks that were too much in debt. Though there were many major problems that resulted from the recession, the drastic increase in unemployment rates became the biggest negative effect of the economic crisis. According to the statistics from The Encyclopedia of the Great Recession, “By March 2008, 63,000 jobs were lost, the most in five years…” (Rosenberg, 599: Unemployment). During the period of decline in economy, revenues decreased and businesses stopped expanding. Moreover, when demand was too low to support the businesses, employers needed to reduce their spendings and save money by lowering wages, stop hiring new workers, and firing old ones. The Great Recession, therefore, initiated the mass discharge of employers and reduced job opportunities for immigrants who had come to

The Recession of 2008 was caused by two major faults: the use of subprime lending and changes in banking culture leaning towards self interest within the banking industry.