Personal Narrative: The Great Recession

It's been a while since I wrote to you, but life has been a struggle lately with the Great Depression hammered down to our nation. People losing their jobs, their house, even their loved ones. I continuously hear story about people commiting suicide because they can't feed their family, or because the depression of being a liability. The rate of people living off the street keep increasing, some survived with their newspaper blankets, while some life were taken away by the cold. No one talk about "hope" these days, as if there is anything to be hopeful about the situation. My business definitely took a hit because the amount of people who can afford to buy stuff keep disappearing. There is no question that I have to close my shop if that will

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

Everyone experiences sadness — sadness is a part of life. However, with many people, their sadness can escalate into a feeling of emptiness and a lack of motivation. I have encountered this, and I am still dealing with it today. Few can remember the moment it happened, but I can. For me, my depression started on my 14th birthday. It happened during a sleepover at my house around 12 a.m. I can remember just laying on my couch texting my friend all content and the next thing I know, I just feel this empty sadness take over, it was unlike anything I had felt before. It had taken me awhile but eventually I realized what was happening to me. It started out as just sadness for a few years, then it morphed into this numbing emptiness. I could still

Last I heard from my friends they had grown ears and tails and one seemed to have a fever so I could only wonder if and when something would happen to me. It was already fairly late so I figured it wouldn't do me any good to stay up all night waiting for something when it might not even happen so i drifted off to sleep. When I woke up for school I was still feeling fine aside from the normal morning haze so I figured might as well finish off this week since it was Friday. During lunch just as I sat down by my friends everything started to feel warmer and a headache began to pulse. Of course my body chose now to betray me. I grabbed my head in a desperate attempt to stop the growing pains and everyone around me began to notice my discomfort and tried to help but it just

In the midst of the current economic downturn, dubbed the “Great Recession”, it is natural to look for one, singular entity or person to blame. Managers of large banks, professional investors and federal regulators have all been named as potential creators of the recession, with varying degrees of guilt. No matter who is to blame, the fallout from the mistakes that were made that led to the current crisis is clear. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the current unemployment rate is 9.7%, with 9.3 million Americans out of work (Bureau of Labor Statistics). Compared to a normal economic rate of two or three percent, it is clear that the decisions of one group of people have had a profound affect on the lives of millions of

I remember coming home on a Monday afternoon and standing in front of the mirror in my room. Mascara and eyeliner were smeared all over my face, and my eyes were puffy. I went over to my dresser and grabbed the small pill bottle laying on top of it. I started off by taking 5. 5 turned into 10; 10 turned into 20; and before I knew it, I had taken 35 pills.

An economic crisis has a destructive impact on the economy, along with social and cultural ramifications. The Great Depression and the Great Recession were no different, but varied in more specific aspects. The crisis of 1929 was preceded by irrational confidence in

It was a cold winter day. I was just trying to keep warm in my living room as I took another sip of hot chocolate. Christmas was just around the corner and we had everything all set up: our lights, our tree, and hot chocolate for at least a month. My mom and I have a tradition of watching christmas specials every night of December, while my dad watches sports in the basement. It’s the same movies and shows every year, but it’s nice spending time with my family.“Scrooged” with Bill Murray was the movie playing. I’ve always been a fan of Bill Murray and the movie was great, but I had homework to do. I migrated to my room where I got comfortable, turned on some christmas music, plugged in my christmas lights, and started my essay. I had to write an opinion piece for journalism. My teacher wants me to write for the newspaper so i really wanted to do well. After about an hour I finished, and was ready to finally go to bed. I jumped into bed and curled up in my blankets. I heard a loud crash come from my closet. “Something probably just fell,” I

In 2007, the U.S. economy experienced one of the greatest downturns since the Depression era, and furthered by the collapse on a global scale. The bubble burst on the housing market and the house of cards called the mortgage industry tumbled down, no longer able to sustain charade of success. This caused the collapse of some of the largest financial institutions, once thought to be immortal. This rippled into a massive tightening of the belts of many companies, as they found themselves without lines of credit, lack of business, and the daisy-chain collapse of their support networks. Who paid the final price? Companies cut costs through pay cuts, layoffs, and closings. While this may have saved jobs for many, the feeling of loss and

George Santayana, a Spanish poet and philosopher said, "Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it." This quote applies to the Great Depression of 1929 and the Great Recession of 2008. There are many similarities between the two, like the causes, the actual events, and the aftermaths. Several factors led to the Great Depression, which were the following: overproduction by business and agriculture, unequal distribution of wealth, Americans buying less, and finally, the stock market crash of 1929. The Great Recession also had similar factors leading to it, like the housing “bubble” burst and less consumer spending. In both events, the Presidents enacted programs that they believed would help the American people.

Depression is intoxicating. She has celestial silver skin and Her eyes are stormy gray with hints of ocean wave from within. When the light hits just right, they reflect a peaceful time when everything at night came to life. She once disguised herself as a companion to me and my best friend, Imagination, an artist with cotton candy hair and emerald eyes. Imagination, Happiness, Compassion, Idealism, Ambition and I had found a home in each other. We would sit all day coloring in abstract patterns with blended water color or riding horses through lively fields of painted grass. We would drone on and on about the future and how we would do this, that, and endless others. Idealism, Ambition, and Compassion set their elaborate plan for us being humble millionaires who would make the world a better place. In unison we always said, “We have potential.” That was until Depression started tagging along. We tried to help Her fit in, but Her water colors smudged in all the wrong places and She had to start again. All the horses ran from Her, grass wept

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

Now in retrospect, the great depression was one of the deepest and prolonged economic downfalls in the 1930s. In the United States however, it soon began after the infamous stock market crash of October 1929, which in fact sent Wall Street into alarm and effected major investors as well business tycoons and other employees. This only deteriorated as businesses would suffer financially and unemployment was at an all the time high. Although President Franklin D. Roosevelt came up with tactics and strategies to lessen the effects of the damage done, the economy wouldn’t fully overcome until after 1939 as World War II shifted America. For a little over a decade, businesses would go through financial turmoil and people would have to find other ways to bring in revenue. During the late summer of the 1929, the American economy entered into a recession. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, a recession is defined as a period of reduced economic activity. Investors had traded some 16 million shares on the New York Stock Exchange in a single day. That day in history was formally known as “Black Tuesday”. Those same shares had ended up being worthless with no monetary value. The investors who bought them with borrowed money, suffered an excessive lost. Consumer reliability was gone as spending was nonexistent which resulted in factories being closed down. The lack of consumerism also impacted

Just as the world has experienced economic challenges in the past, so is it today. Before the Great Depression took place in the USA in 1929,USA had witnessed 19 recessions. And we have continued to encounter economic recessions to this day, the most recent one being that of 2008 which began in the USA but also had ripple effects on the entire global economy. These economic recessions have a negative impact on the well being of human kind. For example during the period of the "Great Depression" in the USA: 12 million people lost their employment, 85 thousand businesses collapsed and a multitude of households were unable to hold their homes.

The great recession of 2008 affected everyone around the world. The great Recession is considered the second worst economic crisis in American history, behind the Great Depression.