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The Economic Crisis Was The Worst Monetary Disaster Since The Great Recession

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The 2008 economic crisis was the worst monetary disaster since the Great Depression that resulted in a global financial meltdown, costing the world over $20 trillion. The Academy Award nominated filmmaker, Charles Ferguson’s Inside Job, exposes the shocking truth behind the Great Recession and how millions of people lost their savings, jobs, and homes. The film begins not on Wall Street or even in the United States, but Iceland. A nation whose problems turn out to become the world’s in microcosm. A small country with a population of only 320,000 people and a gross domestic product (GDP) of $13 billion, ended up with bank losses of over $100 billion.
Iceland was a stable democracy with a high standard of living until the year 2000. In …show more content…

September 15, 2008, the bankruptcy of the investment bank Lehman Brothers, and collapse of the world’s largest insurance company AIG, triggered a global financial crisis. This major fallout was catastrophic; it cost the world tens of trillions of dollars, rendered 30 million people unemployed, and doubled the national debt of the United States. Unfortunately for everyone else, this crisis was caused by an out of control industry. Since the 1980’s this industry has been feeding from the rise of increasingly severe crisis’, each one causing more and more damage. The investment banks went public and stock and bond workers on Wall Street were getting rich. In 1982, the Reagan Administration deregulated savings and loan companies allowing them to make risky investments with their depositor’s money. By the end of the decade, hundreds of these loan companies had failed, costing taxpayers $240 billion dollars and their life savings; otherwise known as a “bank heist”. An example of one of these investment loan companies was Ctitigroup (the largest financial services company in the world). There was an ongoing merger in 1998 between Citicorp and Travelers that violated the Glass- Steagall act, a law passed after the Great Depression so there could be no risky banking activity. Alan Greenspan under the Reagan Administration, ignored it and said nothing. In fact, a year later, with the urging

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