THE GREAT US ECONOMIC RECESSION Introduction Did you know that by the end of the year 2009 the unemployment rate had increased from its average 5% to an astounding 10%? This is because 15.3 million people became unemployed as a result of the economic recession. No shocker, but poverty rate had also increased from 13.2% in 2008 to 14.3% in 2009. This meant that the number of people living in poverty in the United States had increased from 39.8 million to 43.6 million. This great increase had all happened in the span of 1 year. Something that should have taken over 10 years only took 1 year and this is all because of the Great US recession. Also the US suicide rate had reached its highest record since 25 years between the years 2008-09. The great US recession was a result of foolish decisions made in the past, which then in turn lead to a slow and painful punishment for the US economy. It was caused mainly because banks were loaning out too much money; Banks used money which they didn’t really have on paper to invest heavily into the housing market and the stock market; the debts which the citizens were creating by using large amounts of loans to pay for their daily expenses and to pay for expensive things became impossible to pay. Banks were loaning out too much money If you google when the US recession began it will answer 2007. So the better question would be when did it start to develop, because something so grand could not just have been made overnight. The answer to
The recession of 2008, which we are only just starting to come out of, happened as a result of a few major factors. The primary factor was the deregulation of banks during the Bush administration. Another factor was that banks offered loans without looking into the financial stability of borrowers or businesses. Also, credit unions, savings and loans, and banks entered into competition with each other. The Security and Exchange Commission, S.E.C., reduced requirements so that banks could pile up debts.
In August 1929, the peak of the stock market boom, the unemployment rate in the United States was only about three percent. By the end of 1933, the unemployment rate was a staggering twenty-five percent. Over thirteen million people lost their jobs during these years. To put those figures into perspective, the unemployment rate during the recent Great Recession reached only ten percent at its peak in October 2009! Starting in 1930, consumers stopped purchasing goods as they had in the past. Either they didn’t have the money, or they were afraid to spend in fear that the money would be needed more urgently later. The decline in consumer spending further exacerbated the Great Depression because fewer people were buying things. Manufacturing companies did not need to produce as much as they had before, leading to a reduction in the work force. As people lost their jobs, they were unable to keep up with payments for items bought on credit before the financial crisis. The vicious cycle continued from
The United States had overcome two major economic crisis. The biggest crisis was the great depression, a ten year span from 1929 - 1939. The great recession is a more recent crisis, which affected many families from 2007 - 2009. There are many differences as well as similarities which makes it a good topic to compare the two.
The Great Recession officially ended in 2009. Since then, the US economy has been sluggish but has shown signs of improvement. The Obama administration submitted bills to help stabilize the financial system and automobile industries. The Federal Reserve has maintained low interest rates in an attempt to encourage borrowing and spending money. The unemployment rate has dropped to approximately half what it was in 2009. Although wages haven’t increased to keep up with inflation, they are starting to show signs of improvement. Overall, the
A variety of things led up to the great recession of 2008, from a period of moderation, to a housing bubble, to a housing bubble bust. the government hasn't witnessed an economic downturn like this since the great depression. here are the main reasons why this recession happened. It all started with the moderation showed in the economy between 2000 to 2007. there was low inflation, strong economic growth, and falling unemployment. however, through all this, there was growing instability in terms of credit and financial markets. The next cause of the great recession was a housing bubble. Prices in housing quickly grew to really high prices, this was due to the high confidence and bank lending. Banks later started becoming more careless with
The old saying the fox is going to watch the henhouse is some of it for same problems we run into with regulators regulating themselves. Part of the systemic problem that existed in the late part of the first decade of the 21st century were government entities known as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Both of these government institutions would just as responsible as the banks themselves for the crisis that took place and sworn new regulation which may not be far-reaching enough.
The underlying problems that caused the financial crisis of 2008 began building before many economists and policymakers are willing to admit. Since the laissez-faire policies of the Reagan administration in the 1980s, inequality and unemployment heightened. “Between 1976 and 2006 (...) ation-adjusted per capita income increased by 64 percent, for the bottom 90 percent of households it increased only by 10 percent. For the top one percent of households it increased 232 percent,” (Wisman 2013, 932) causing an income gap. Another arsing issue was globalization after World War II. The economy’s structure changed and outdated previous economic policy. Manufacturing jobs were outsourced because labor was cheaper abroad; the US imported more goods than it exported, causing a trade deficit.
In the year of 2007, the Great Recession began. It all started at the bustling Wall Street. It was a pandemic that brought dilemma to the businesses, to the employees and to the elated new home owners. JP Morgan Chase was one of the major banks participated in falsifying the mortgage loans, and they suffered consequences for what they did. The mortgage loans gave temporary joy but longtime misery to home buyers. The federal government filed a lawsuit, and it reached a settlement. The tragedy resulted to Global and Financial reforms.
The Great Recession-which officially lasted from December 2007 to June 2009-began with the bursting of an 8 trillion dollar housing bubble. The resulting loss of wealth led to sharp cutbacks in consumer spending. This loss of consumption, combined with the financial market chaos triggered by the bursting of the bubble, also led to a collapse in business investment. As consumer spending and business investment dried up, massive job loss followed. In 2008 and 2009, the U.S. labor market lost 8.4 million jobs, or 6.1% of all payroll employment. (The Great Recession, n.d.)
The cause of the Great Recession of 2007 in the United States was very life changing for the people who had to live through it. Multiple things happened in the stock market and other things that triggered this financial meltdown of the Global market.
The Great Recession began in late 2007 and quickly spread throughout the world. The downturn provided continuous high unemployment, a spreading foreclosure crisis, and minimal consumer spending.The crisis threatened the viability of financial institutions with deep exposure to defaults and foreclosures (Love & Mattern, 2011). Bank after bank were either closing down or merging just to stay afloat. This led to banks reducing their lending which made it both difficult and expensive to borrow money. This fall in consumption and investment led to businesses decreasing labor which further hurt GDP and unemployment saw an all-time high. This effect was not only felt in the United States. Countries that had exposure to the US also suffered from the
There are times when a nation undergoes economic hardship for a long or short period of time. The recession is the term used by economists to define this period, it is a time when the nation?s economic GDP is low for more than two quarters consecutively (Beckworth, 2012). Recession often results in plunges in the stock market, unemployment, housing market, and a decrease in the quality of life of the citizens. The United States experienced a recession from December 2007 to June 2009 (Braude, 2013). It was the country?s greatest economic downfall for last 60 years earning the name ?The Great Recession?. During this period there
The 2008 so called “Great Recession” was a time that was tough on a great deal of americans as well as people all around of the world. The shock was the popping of the housing bubble. After the great burst, the financial situation of the country began to spiral out of control. Unemployment skyrocketed. Millions of Americans were laid off. The inflation rate plummeted to an extremely unhealthy amount. This was strange because the United States had recently spent decades working to lower inflation rate. They finally received what they wanted and much more. The consumer price index also eventually crashed as well. A big reason for these crashes were civilian reactions to the bursted housing bubbles. The United States took several actions to recover from the crisis. They worked at lowering mortgage interest rates and also passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. They also bailed out huge failing banks like AIG. We took many actions that eventually paid off and pulled us out of the recession.
The United States has a history of economic recessions and sometimes, depressions. The most recent and significant of which is the Great Recession of 2007 - 2009 and the Great Depression. Both the Great Recession and the Great Depression was caused by a multitude of ongoing problems at the time. For the Great Recession, it was greed as many people flipped houses for extra money and fell into financial ruin when the price of houses fell. The Great Depression, on the other hand, was a result of issues such as overproduction, stagnant wages, installation plans with the use of credit cards, margin buying, and poor bank regulations. However, during both times of crisis, the government took control of the situation
A recession can be defined as an economic decline in gross domestic product, in which, a nation experiences a downward sloping growth rate. Additionally, recessions tend to have a time range of two or more periods/quarters of falling real gross domestic product (GDP), consequently from the negative sloping economic growth rate. In order to properly define causal factors of a recession, it is most appropriate to elucidate what GDP’s meaning.