2008 Financial Crisis

The 2008 Financial Crisis, also known as the Global Financial Crisis, was the worst economic disaster that led to the Great Recession, where housing prices dropped more than the price plunge during the Great Depression of 1929. Considered as the greatest jolt to the global financial system in almost a century, the crisis started in August 2007 with a series of significant financial landslides, pushing the world’s banking system towards the edge of collapse. The immediate trigger was a combination of financial speculations in the financial market, caused by deregulation in the financial industry that permitted banks to engage in hedge fund trading with derivatives. Within a few weeks in September 2008, Lehman Brothers, one of the world’s biggest financial institutions, went bankrupt. As a response to the financial crisis, to prevent further collapse, lending has been encouraged, restoring faith in the integral commercial paper markets, providing banks with enough funds to allow customers to make withdrawals. Two years after the recession ended, unemployment was still above 9%.