The Great Recession officially began in December 2007 and ended in June 2009, making it the longest recession since World War II. Some people blame it on the greed of the Wall Street bankers and others on subprime mortgage lenders. It began with the bursting of an 8 trillion dollar housing bubble. The subsequent loss of wealth prompted sharp reductions in consumer spending. This loss of consumption, joined with the financial market mayhem, also led to a collapse in investment banking. Massive job loss followed the same trend as the dwindling consumer spending and business investment. In 2008 and 2009, the U.S. labor market lost 8.4 million occupations - the most considerable business contraction of any recession since the Great Depression. The Great Recession of 2008 was sparked by the housing crisis and Americans today still struggle with its effects.
Home builders responded to a false price signal in the economy -
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The Federal Reserve had began lowering interest rates from 6.5% in the late 2000, all the way down to 1% in November of 2003 and kept it there until June of 2004. These artificially low interest rates encouraged consumers to buy houses and builders to produce more houses. However, the low interest rate was not an accurate reflection of the true demand for houses in the marketplace. At the same time, Congress amended the Community Reinvestment Act, encouraging banks to offer mortgages to lower income borrowers who would ordinarily not qualify for a loan. In addition, the Federal Government required Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the now two infamous government sponsored lenders, to provide over half their mortgages to low-income buyers, also known as subprime mortgages. Essentially, this meant that banks and other mortgages lenders were told to relax their lending standards, and provide mortgages to people who
First, we need to understand how the Great Recession occurred. It all started with President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. Reagan was famous for his supply-side economic views (Amadeo 1). He used top-down economics meaning he used government intervention to give businesses tax breaks and subsidies to create economic growth. With this he also started a continuing phenomenon to deregulate Wall Street. He believed this would create vast economic growth and it did. But it created a bubble and it
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.
The Great Depression was the longest economic recession in the history of the United States. The recession started in the summer of 1929 when stock prices began to rise and also when there was a maldistribution of wealth. Consumers were receiving too little money to spend to keep up with the pace of the growing markets. There were also many other issues that also contributed to the Great Depression, there was a lack of diversification because many people over invested in automobiles and construction.
The United States entered “The Great Recession” in December of 2007. Its impact was felt by nations all around the world. This event triggered the loss of 8.8 million jobs around the country and created a sense of economic instability. I’m very interested in finance and stocks, so this provided an incentive to be careful with my purchases and investments
The Great Recession of the 2000’s is something many of us have been affected by in some way or form. From the real estate bubble to the acts of major firms on Wall Street-there were numerous factors that lead to this recession. The United States Government is to blame in large for what happened to the economy in the early part of the 2000’s. Major firms such as Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, and AIG tried to used the failing economy as a huge paycheck to their CEO’s, payouts made partially by the US Government’s bailouts. The government should have allocated money to the people who were struggling, not continue to feed the “hand that bit them.”
An economic recession occurs when the economy is suffering, and unemployment is on a rise. A drop in the stock market and a decrease in the housing market will also affect the economy due to a recession. Higher interest rates affect the economy constrain liquidly or the cash available to invest in stocks and businesses. Inflation alludes to the rise in prices of goods and services which also puts a strain on the economy further adding to a recession. Businesses were lost and consumer spending dwindled the only category that remained safe was healthcare. The economic meaning of a recession is a decline in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) consisting of two consecutive quarters on a decline. If the economy is bad consumers are less likely to spend money on goods and service. The effects of a declining economy forced the government to create monetary
A few years later the market took a turn for the worse, where interest rates were on the rise, and homes were losing their value quickly. Now borrowers that were in these interest only ARM’s needed to refinance these loans because the rates were going up, to a point where the homeowner was not be able to afford the payment. The Federal Reserve tried to stimulate the economy by lowering interest rates during the recession in early 2001, from over 6% in 2000, to a rate just above 1.25% in 2002. These low rates encouraged many Americans to apply for loans for homes that a few years ago they would have not been able to. To encourage the homeownership boom, the Bush administration urged Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to allot more money for low-income borrowers so they could buy their own homes. This resulted in the subprime mortgage
In my first days in office, I confronted an array of immediate challenges associated with the Great Recession. I also had to deal with one of the nation’s most intractable and long-standing problems, a health care system that fell far short of its potential. In 2008, the United States devoted 16% of the economy to health care, an increase of almost one-quarter since 1998 (when 13% of the economy was spent on health care), yet much of that spending did not translate into better outcomes for patients.1- 4 The health care system also fell short on quality of care, too often failing to keep patients safe, waiting to treat patients when they were sick rather than focusing on keeping them healthy, and delivering fragmented, poorly coordinated care.5,6
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
The Great Recession was an economic behemoth the likes the United States had never seen before since the Great Depression. In fact, the Great Recession of 2007-2009 was an unmitigated disaster for the US and world economy, its effects still lasting to this day. The Great Recession was spurred by an influx in subprime mortgages and loans. Normally, banks lend money to those they know are capable of paying it back with interest; however, in the early 2000s, banks took advantage of the unregulated sector of subprime loans, creating a substantial housing bubble at the cost of considerable profit. Soon millions of low-income and middle-class Americans were buying homes for much more than their normal income could pay for, but with ever increasing
Everybody in the United Stated was affected by the recession that began in December of 2007 and spanned all the way to June 2009. Even though the recession is over, many people are still being affected by it and have still not been able to recover from the great recession. “The recent recession features the largest decline in output, consumption, and investment, and the largest increase in unemployment, of any post-war recession”. Many people lost their jobs due to the recession and some of them are still having a hard time finding jobs and getting back on their feet. Businesses
Ever since the Recession of 2008, the process of acquiring employment has become extremely challenging and exhausting. After months of searching, a significant amount of job seekers are willing to accept any job offers that will allow them to put food on the tables. If you follow the United States’ economic recovery, you probably know that there are about 10.5 million unemployed Americans and constant debates about how to create more jobs. What you may not know is that there are actually four million open jobs waiting to be filled. So how is it possible and who is there to blame?
There is no doubt that subprime lending was a major cause of the Recession. It was a tactic used by investment banks in order to get more money from unsuspecting homeowners. However, lenders found out that most of the people who were qualified to have a mortgage already had one. In turn, the lenders had to lower their credit criteria for people to take out a loan on a house. This is how the term subprime lending came to be in the financial world. As a result of subprime lending, the investors were able to make millions off of these mortgages. People who qualified for a subprime mortgage usually had a credit score below that of 620. To make the subprime mortgage deal more customer friendly, the lending banks decided to have the people who qualified for these mortgages didn’t have to have a down payment. Normally, the down payment would be as much as 20%, but this made it easier for people to get mortgages without having to worry about how much money they needed at the beginning of their purchase. “ Many American homeowners bought houses they could not afford,
On the 26th of November 2001, the National Bureau of Economic Research, declared that after ten years of economic expansion, the United States was in a recession as of March 2001 (Coplan 9). During the last quarter of 2001, the United States experienced a terrible tragedy; the 9/11 terrorist attack. However, economists believe that even if the terrorist attack had not taken place, the recession would have still been present, but it did in fact delay recovery. The recession of 2001 was by far different than all the other recessions. It was in fact, better than other recessions because the 2001 only lasted a quarter. Real GDP barley changed and the unemployment rates slightly rose (Nordhaus 2). It was found that banks have improved their performance during the recession, they were prepared for the worst this time around. During the 1990s, risk management became an important factor for banking discipline. Using risk managements, it gives the economy a potential to increase the stability. Thereby, banks benefited from an environment that rapidly declined short term interest rates, which enabled them to borrow at a lower cost (Schuermann 2). These risk managements played an important factor during the recession while impacting the United States economy in a positive manner.
This recession has been the biggest economic struggle in my lifetime. Everything that could go wrong went wrong. The event that led to this recession is the housing crisis, where banks were giving out loans, almost without any restrictions. People were getting involved in one of the best economic times in our history. Confidence was everywhere and the ideal mindset hit everyone. When the economy hit all new highs, people thought the supply and demand chain would continuously rise. The business cycle seemed to be a lie to many Americans. However, the business cycle is real and the world lives a part of it everyday. When deregulation became extreme and private companies, especially banks, got all the power, nothing could stop them