Graph and download economic data for Unemployment Rate for United States (M0892AUSM156SNBR) from Apr 1929 to Jun 1942 about unemployment, rate, and USA.

The Volcker Shock was a period of historically high interest rates precipitated by Federal Reserve Chairperson Paul Volcker's decision to raise the central bank's key interest rate, the Fed funds effective rate, during the first three years of his term. Volcker was appointed chairperson of the Fed in August 1979 by President Jimmy Carter, as replacement for William Miller, who Carter had made his treasury secretary. Volcker was one of the most hawkish (supportive of tighter monetary policy to stem inflation) members of the Federal Reserve's committee, and quickly set about changing the course of monetary policy in the U.S. in order to quell inflation. The Volcker Shock is remembered for bringing an end to over a decade of high inflation in the United States, prompting a deep recession and high unemployment, and for spurring on debt defaults among developing countries in Latin America who had borrowed in U.S. dollars.

Monetary tightening and the recessions of the early '80s

Beginning in October 1979, Volcker's Fed tightened monetary policy by raising interest rates. This decision had the effect of depressing demand and slowing down the U.S. economy, as credit became more expensive for households and businesses. The Fed funds rate, the key overnight rate at which banks lend their excess reserves to each other, rose as high as 17.6 percent in early 1980. The rate was allowed to fall back below 10 percent following this first peak, however, due to worries that inflation was not falling fast enough, a second cycle of monetary tightening was embarked upon starting in August of 1980. The rate would reach its all-time peak in June of 1981, at 19.1 percent. The second recession sparked by these hikes was far deeper than the 1980 recession, with unemployment peaking at 10.8 percent in December 1980, the highest level since The Great Depression. This recession would drive inflation to a low point during Volcker's terms of 2.5 percent in August 1983.

The legacy of the Volcker Shock

By the end of Volcker's terms as Fed Chair, inflation was at a manageable rate of around four percent, while unemployment had fallen under six percent, as the economy grew and business confidence returned. While supporters of Volcker's actions point to these numbers as proof of the efficacy of his actions, critics have claimed that there were less harmful ways that inflation could have been brought under control. The recessions of the early 1980s are cited as accelerating deindustrialization in the U.S., as manufacturing jobs lost in 'rust belt' states such as Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania never returned during the years of recovery. The Volcker Shock was also a driving factor behind the Latin American debt crises of the 1980s, as governments in the region defaulted on debts which they had incurred in U.S. dollars. Debates about the validity of using interest rate hikes to get inflation under control have recently re-emerged due to the inflationary pressures facing the U.S. following the Coronavirus pandemic and the Federal Reserve's subsequent decision to embark on a course of monetary tightening.

The U.S. federal funds rate peaked in 2023 at its highest level since the 2007-08 financial crisis, reaching 5.33 percent by December 2023. A significant shift in monetary policy occurred in the second half of 2024, with the Federal Reserve implementing regular rate cuts. By December 2024, the rate had declined to 4.48 percent. What is a central bank rate? The federal funds rate determines the cost of overnight borrowing between banks, allowing them to maintain necessary cash reserves and ensure financial system liquidity. When this rate rises, banks become more inclined to hold rather than lend money, reducing the money supply. While this decreased lending slows economic activity, it helps control inflation by limiting the circulation of money in the economy. Historic perspective The federal funds rate historically follows cyclical patterns, falling during recessions and gradually rising during economic recoveries. Some central banks, notably the European Central Bank, went beyond traditional monetary policy by implementing both aggressive asset purchases and negative interest rates.

Graph and download economic data for Dates of U.S. recessions as inferred by GDP-based recession indicator (JHDUSRGDPBR) from Q4 1967 to Q3 2024 about recession indicators, GDP, and USA.

The Federal Reserve implements its monetary policy by using open market operations in United States government securities to target the federal funds rate. A substantial decline in the stock of United States Treasury debt could interfere with the conduct of monetary policy, possibly forcing the Fed to rely more heavily on discount window lending or to conduct open market transactions in other types of securities. Either choice would cause the implementation of monetary policy to resemble the methods used by the Fed before World War II. This paper describes two things: (1) how the Fed implemented monetary policy before the war and (2) the conflicts that arose within the Fed over the allocation of private-sector credit when discount window loans and Fed purchases of private securities were a substantial component of Federal Reserve credit. Those conflicts help explain the Fed's failure to respond vigorously to the Great Depression. The experience suggests that a renewed reliance on the discount window or on open market operations in securities other than those issued by the United States Treasury could hamper the conduct of monetary policy if it leads to increased pressure on the Fed to affect the allocation of credit.

Graph and download economic data for NBER based Recession Indicators for the United States from the Period following the Peak through the Trough (USREC) from Dec 1854 to Feb 2025 about peak, trough, recession indicators, and USA.

During the period beginning roughly in the mid-1980s until the Global Financial Crisis (2007-2008), the U.S. economy experienced a time of relative economic calm, with low inflation and consistent GDP growth. Compared with the turbulent economic era which had preceded it in the 1970s and the early 1980s, the lack of extreme fluctuations in the business cycle led some commentators to suggest that macroeconomic issues such as high inflation, long-term unemployment and financial crises were a thing of the past. Indeed, the President of the American Economic Association, Professor Robert Lucas, famously proclaimed in 2003 that "central problem of depression prevention has been solved, for all practical purposes". Ben Bernanke, the future chairman of the Federal Reserve during the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and 2022 Nobel Prize in Economics recipient, coined the term 'the Great Moderation' to describe this era of newfound economic confidence. The era came to an abrupt end with the outbreak of the GFC in the Summer of 2007, as the U.S. financial system began to crash due to a downturn in the real estate market.

Causes of the Great Moderation, and its downfall

A number of factors have been cited as contributing to the Great Moderation including central bank monetary policies, the shift from manufacturing to services in the economy, improvements in information technology and management practices, as well as reduced energy prices. The period coincided with the term of Fed chairman Alan Greenspan (1987-2006), famous for the 'Greenspan put', a policy which meant that the Fed would proactively address downturns in the stock market using its monetary policy tools. These economic factors came to prominence at the same time as the end of the Cold War (1947-1991), with the U.S. attaining a new level of hegemony in global politics, as its main geopolitical rival, the Soviet Union, no longer existed. During the Great Moderation, the U.S. experienced a recession twice, between July 1990 and March 1991, and again from March 2001 tom November 2001, however, these relatively short recessions did not knock the U.S. off its growth path. The build up of household and corporate debt over the early 2000s eventually led to the Global Financial Crisis, as the bursting of the U.S. housing bubble in 2007 reverberated across the financial system, with a subsequent credit freeze and mass defaults.

This is not going to be an article or Op-Ed about Michael Jordan. Since 2009 we've been in the longest bull-market in history, that's 11 years and counting. However a few metrics like the stock market P/E, the call to put ratio and of course the Shiller P/E suggest a great crash is coming in-between the levels of 1929 and the dot.com bubble. Mean reversion historically is inevitable and the Fed's printing money experiment could end in disaster for the stock market in late 2021 or 2022. You can read Jeremy Grantham's Last Dance article here. You are likely well aware of Michael Burry's predicament as well. It's easier for you just to skim through two related videos on this topic of a stock market crash. Michael Burry's Warning see this YouTube. Jeremy Grantham's Warning See this YouTube. Typically when there is a major event in the world, there is a crash and then a bear market and a recovery that takes many many months. In March, 2020 that's not what we saw since the Fed did some astonishing things that means a liquidity sloth and the risk of a major inflation event. The pandemic represented the quickest decline of at least 30% in the history of the benchmark S&P 500, but the recovery was not correlated to anything but Fed intervention. Since the pandemic clearly isn't disappearing and many sectors such as travel, business travel, tourism and supply chain disruptions appear significantly disrupted - the so-called economic recovery isn't so great. And there's this little problem at the heart of global capitalism today, the stock market just keeps going up. Crashes and corrections typically occur frequently in a normal market. But the Fed liquidity and irresponsible printing of money is creating a scenario where normal behavior isn't occurring on the markets. According to data provided by market analytics firm Yardeni Research, the benchmark index has undergone 38 declines of at least 10% since the beginning of 1950. Since March, 2020 we've barely seen a down month. September, 2020 was flat-ish. The S&P 500 has more than doubled since those lows. Look at the angle of the curve: The S&P 500 was 735 at the low in 2009, so in this bull market alone it has gone up 6x in valuation. That's not a normal cycle and it could mean we are due for an epic correction. I have to agree with the analysts who claim that the long, long bull market since 2009 has finally matured into a fully-fledged epic bubble. There is a complacency, buy-the dip frenzy and general meme environment to what BigTech can do in such an environment. The weight of Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, Facebook, Nvidia and Tesla together in the S&P and Nasdaq is approach a ridiculous weighting. When these stocks are seen both as growth, value and companies with unbeatable moats the entire dynamics of the stock market begin to break down. Check out FANG during the pandemic. BigTech is Seen as Bullet-Proof me valuations and a hysterical speculative behavior leads to even higher highs, even as 2020 offered many younger people an on-ramp into investing for the first time. Some analysts at JP Morgan are even saying that until retail investors stop charging into stocks, markets probably don’t have too much to worry about. Hedge funds with payment for order flows can predict exactly how these retail investors are behaving and monetize them. PFOF might even have to be banned by the SEC. The risk-on market theoretically just keeps going up until the Fed raises interest rates, which could be in 2023! For some context, we're more than 1.4 years removed from the bear-market bottom of the coronavirus crash and haven't had even a 5% correction in nine months. This is the most over-priced the market has likely ever been. At the night of the dot-com bubble the S&P 500 was only 1,400. Today it is 4,500, not so many years after. Clearly something is not quite right if you look at history and the P/E ratios. A market pumped with liquidity produces higher earnings with historically low interest rates, it's an environment where dangerous things can occur. In late 1997, as the S&P 500 passed its previous 1929 peak of 21x earnings, that seemed like a lot, but nothing compared to today. For some context, the S&P 500 Shiller P/E closed last week at 38.58, which is nearly a two-decade high. It's also well over double the average Shiller P/E of 16.84, dating back 151 years. So the stock market is likely around 2x over-valued. Try to think rationally about what this means for valuations today and your favorite stock prices, what should they be in historical terms? The S&P 500 is up 31% in the past year. It will likely hit 5,000 before a correction given the amount of added liquidity to the system and the QE the Fed is using that's like a huge abuse of MMT, or Modern Monetary Theory. This has also lent to bubbles in the housing market, crypto and even commodities like Gold with long-term global GDP meeting many headwinds in the years ahead due to a demographic shift of an ageing population and significant technological automation. So if you think that stocks or equities or ETFs are the best place to put your money in 2022, you might want to think again. The crash of the OTC and small-cap market since February 2021 has been quite an indication of what a correction looks like. According to the Motley Fool what happens after major downturns in the market historically speaking? In each of the previous four instances that the S&P 500's Shiller P/E shot above and sustained 30, the index lost anywhere from 20% to 89% of its value. So what's what we too are due for, reversion to the mean will be realistically brutal after the Fed's hyper-extreme intervention has run its course. Of course what the Fed stimulus has really done is simply allowed the 1% to get a whole lot richer to the point of wealth inequality spiraling out of control in the decades ahead leading us likely to a dystopia in an unfair and unequal version of BigTech capitalism. This has also led to a trend of short squeeze to these tech stocks, as shown in recent years' data. Of course the Fed has to say that's its done all of these things for the people, employment numbers and the labor market. Women in the workplace have been set behind likely 15 years in social progress due to the pandemic and the Fed's response. While the 89% lost during the Great Depression would be virtually impossible today thanks to ongoing intervention from the Federal Reserve and Capitol Hill, a correction of 20% to 50% would be pretty fair and simply return the curve back to a normal trajectory as interest rates going back up eventually in the 2023 to 2025 period. It's very unlikely the market has taken Fed tapering into account (priced-in), since the euphoria of a can't miss market just keeps pushing the markets higher. But all good things must come to an end. Earlier this month, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released inflation data from July. This report showed that the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers rose 5.2% over the past 12 months. While the Fed and economists promise us this inflation is temporary, others are not so certain. As you print so much money, the money you have is worth less and certain goods cost more. Wage gains in some industries cannot be taken back, they are permanent - in the service sector like restaurants, hospitality and travel that have been among the hardest hit. The pandemic has led to a paradigm shift in the future of work, and that too is not temporary. The Great Resignation means white collar jobs with be more WFM than ever before, with a new software revolution, different transport and energy behaviors and so forth. Climate change alone could slow down global GDP in the 21st century. How can inflation be temporary when so many trends don't appear to be temporary? Sure the price of lumber or used-cars could be temporary, but a global chip shortage is exasperating the automobile sector. The stock market isn't even behaving like it cares about anything other than the Fed, and its $billions of dollars of buying bonds each month. Some central banks will start to taper about December, 2021 (like the European). However Delta could further mutate into a variant that makes the first generation of vaccines less effective. Such a macro event could be enough to trigger the correction we've been speaking about. So stay safe, and keep your money safe. The Last Dance of the 2009 bull market could feel especially more painful because we've been spoiled for so long in the markets. We can barely remember what March, 2020 felt like. Some people sold their life savings simply due to scare tactics by the likes of Bill Ackman. His scare tactics on CNBC won him likely hundreds of millions as the stock market tanked. Hedge funds further gamed the Reddit and Gamestop movement, orchestrating them and leading the new retail investors into meme speculation and a whole bunch of other unsavory things like options trading at such scale we've never seen before. It's not just inflation and higher interest rates, it's how absurdly high valuations have become. Still correlation does not imply causation. Just because inflation has picked up, it doesn't guarantee that stocks will head lower. Nevertheless, weaker buying power associated with higher inflation can't be overlooked as a potential negative for the U.S. economy and equities. The current S&P500 10-year P/E Ratio is 38.7. This is 97% above the modern-era market average of 19.6, putting the current P/E 2.5 standard deviations above the modern-era average. This is just math, folks. History is saying the stock market is 2x its true value. So why and who would be full on the market or an asset class like crypto that is mostly speculative in nature to begin with? Study the following on a historical basis, and due your own due diligence as to the health of the markets: Debt-to-GDP ratio Call to put ratio

Abstract (en): The Federal Reserve implements its monetary policy by using open market operations in United States government securities to target the federal funds rate. A substantial decline in the stock of United States Treasury debt could interfere with the conduct of monetary policy, possibly forcing the Fed to rely more heavily on discount window lending or to conduct open market transactions in other types of securities. Either choice would cause the implementation of monetary policy to resemble the methods used by the Fed before World War II. This paper describes two things: (1) how the Fed implemented monetary policy before the war and (2) the conflicts that arose within the Fed over the allocation of private-sector credit when discount window loans and Fed purchases of private securities were a substantial component of Federal Reserve credit. Those conflicts help explain the Fed's failure to respond vigorously to the Great Depression. The experience suggests that a renewed reliance on the discount window or on open market operations in securities other than those issued by the United States Treasury could hamper the conduct of monetary policy if it leads to increased pressure on the Fed to affect the allocation of credit. The file submitted is 0205dwd.txt. These data are part of ICPSR's Publication-Related Archive and are distributed exactly as they arrived from the data depositor. ICPSR has not checked or processed this material. Users should consult the investigator if further information is desired.

The Global Financial Crisis of 2008-09 was a period of severe macroeconomic instability for the United States and the global economy more generally. The crisis was precipitated by the collapse of a number of financial institutions who were deeply involved in the U.S. mortgage market and associated credit markets. Beginning in the Summer of 2007, a number of banks began to report issues with increasing mortgage delinquencies and the problem of not being able to accurately price derivatives contracts which were based on bundles of these U.S. residential mortgages. By the end of 2008, U.S. financial institutions had begun to fail due to their exposure to the housing market, leading to one of the deepest recessions in the history of the United States and to extensive government bailouts of the financial sector.

Subprime and the collapse of the U.S. mortgage market

The early 2000s had seen explosive growth in the U.S. mortgage market, as credit became cheaper due to the Federal Reserve's decision to lower interest rates in the aftermath of the 2001 'Dot Com' Crash, as well as because of the increasing globalization of financial flows which directed funds into U.S. financial markets. Lower mortgage rates gave incentive to financial institutions to begin lending to riskier borrowers, using so-called 'subprime' loans. These were loans to borrowers with poor credit scores, who would not have met the requirements for a conventional mortgage loan. In order to hedge against the risk of these riskier loans, financial institutions began to use complex financial instruments known as derivatives, which bundled mortgage loans together and allowed the risk of default to be sold on to willing investors. This practice was supposed to remove the risk from these loans, by effectively allowing credit institutions to buy insurance against delinquencies. Due to the fraudulent practices of credit ratings agencies, however, the price of these contacts did not reflect the real risk of the loans involved. As the reality of the inability of the borrowers to repay began to kick in during 2007, the financial markets which traded these derivatives came under increasing stress and eventually led to a 'sudden stop' in trading and credit intermediation during 2008.

Market Panic and The Great Recession

As borrowers failed to make repayments, this had a knock-on effect among financial institutions who were highly leveraged with financial instruments based on the mortgage market. Lehman Brothers, one of the world's largest investment banks, failed on September 15th 2008, causing widespread panic in financial markets. Due to the fear of an unprecedented collapse in the financial sector which would have untold consequences for the wider economy, the U.S. government and central bank, The Fed, intervened the following day to bailout the United States' largest insurance company, AIG, and to backstop financial markets. The crisis prompted a deep recession, known colloquially as The Great Recession, drawing parallels between this period and The Great Depression. The collapse of credit intermediation in the economy lead to further issues in the real economy, as business were increasingly unable to pay back loans and were forced to lay off staff, driving unemployment to a high of almost 10 percent in 2010. While there has been criticism of the U.S. government's actions to bailout the financial institutions involved, the actions of the government and the Fed are seen by many as having prevented the crisis from spiraling into a depression of the magnitude of The Great Depression.

The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel was established in 1968 with an endowment from the Swedish central bank, the Riksbank. The award is administered by the Nobel Foundation, although it is not one of the Nobel Prizes, which were established in the will of Alfred Nobel. The award is chosen using the same method as the original Nobel Prizes and is awarded at the same ceremony as the prizes in Physics, Chemistry, Medicine and Literature every year in Stockholm, while The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded at a different ceremony in Oslo, Norway. Well known public figures who have received the award in the past include Milton Friedman of the University of Chicago in 1976 and Paul Krugman of Princeton University in 2008. The 2022 Prize The winners of the prize in 2022 were Ben Bernanke, Douglas Diamond and Philip Dybvig for "research on banks and financial crises". Ben Bernanke is most well known as the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, where he oversaw the response to the Global Financial Crisis, as well as for his academic work on the causes of the 1929 Wall Street Crash and The Great Depression, which he conducted largely at Princeton. Diamond and Dybvig are the authors of a formal theoretical model, the Diamond-Dybvig model, which pioneered the modelling of bank runs and financial panics. While the decision to award the prize to Bernanke, Diamond and Dybvig has been praised for recognizing their contributions to the theoretical and historical study of banking and its relation to financial panics, others have criticized the decision as their work is seen as ignoring the development of non-bank financial intermediaries, as well as criticizing Bernanke for his policy response to the financial crisis. Diamond is the University of Chicago's fourteenth recipient of the award, while Bernanke is Princeton's ninth and Dybvig is the Wahington University of St. Louis' second. The 2023 Prize The winner of the 2023 prize was Claudia Goldin of Harvard University for "having advanced our understanding of women's labor market outcomes". Goldin is only the third woman to receieve the Sveriges Riksbank prize - Elinor Ostrom being awarded in 2009 and Esther Duflo in 2019 - and the first woman to receive the prize as a sole winner. Goldin is an economic historian and a labor economist by training, whose work has focused on the historical development of women's participation in the labor market and the effects, both on the economy and on wider society, that this has had. Goldin's career-long research into these topics was summarised in her 2019 book Career and Family: Women's Century-Long Jouney toward Equity, which pointed to the unequal pressures which women and men haved faced when building careers over the past century, as women have had to balance their professional ambitions with their traditional role in the household. The 2024 Prize The winners of the 2024 prize were Daron Acemoglu, Simon Roberts Johnson, and James A. Robinson from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Chicago, recognized for their work on "how institutions are formed and affect prosperity." Their research focuses on understanding the differences in how economic growth is shaped by the quality of institutions, demonstrating that inclusive institutions foster wealth creation by generating a virtuous circle of economic growth. Acemoglu and Roberts Johnson are the 11th recipients of the prize, placing MIT only four prizes behind the University of Chicago.

By November 2025, it is projected that there is a probability of 33.56 percent that the United States will fall into another economic recession. This reflects a significant decrease from the projection of the preceding month.

As of October 16, 2024, the yield for a ten-year U.S. government bond was 4.04 percent, while the yield for a two-year bond was 3.96 percent. This represents an inverted yield curve, whereby bonds of longer maturities provide a lower yield, reflecting investors' expectations for a decline in long-term interest rates. Hence, making long-term debt holders open to more risk under the uncertainty around the condition of financial markets in the future. That markets are uncertain can be seen by considering both the short-term fluctuations, and the long-term downward trend, of the yields of U.S. government bonds from 2006 to 2021, before the treasury yield curve increased again significantly in 2022 and 2023. What are government bonds? Government bonds, otherwise called ‘sovereign’ or ‘treasury’ bonds, are financial instruments used by governments to raise money for government spending. Investors give the government a certain amount of money (the ‘face value’), to be repaid at a specified time in the future (the ‘maturity date’). In addition, the government makes regular periodic interest payments (called ‘coupon payments’). Once initially issued, government bonds are tradable on financial markets, meaning their value can fluctuate over time (even though the underlying face value and coupon payments remain the same). Investors are attracted to government bonds as, provided the country in question has a stable economy and political system, they are a very safe investment. Accordingly, in periods of economic turmoil, investors may be willing to accept a negative overall return in order to have a safe haven for their money. For example, once the market value is compared to the total received from remaining interest payments and the face value, investors have been willing to accept a negative return on two-year German government bonds between 2014 and 2021. Conversely, if the underlying economy and political structures are weak, investors demand a higher return to compensate for the higher risk they take on. Consequently, the return on bonds in emerging markets like Brazil are consistently higher than that of the United States (and other developed economies). Inverted yield curves When investors are worried about the financial future, it can lead to what is called an ‘inverted yield curve’. An inverted yield curve is where investors pay more for short term bonds than long term, indicating they do not have confidence in long-term financial conditions. Historically, the yield curve has historically inverted before each of the last five U.S. recessions. The last U.S. yield curve inversion occurred at several brief points in 2019 – a trend which continued until the Federal Reserve cut interest rates several times over that year. However, the ultimate trigger for the next recession was the unpredicted, exogenous shock of the global coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, showing how such informal indicators may be grounded just as much in coincidence as causation.

Although it was not a united country until 1871, industrialization across Germany began in the early 1800s, and it quickly saw Germany emerge as a Great Power in Europe. German industrialization was largely driven by coal and steel production, of which Germany had rich deposits, and these were used in construction and infrastructure to modernize the country. The mechanization of agriculture also fed into this, as many people from rural regions flocked to cities in search of work. Many of the coal and iron deposits were located in Germany's west, particularly around the Rhine and Ruhr regions, and industry here benefitted from strong rail and water transport networks. Today, with over five million inhabitants, the Ruhr region is the most populous metropolitan area in the country, largely due to these developments. While Germany was among the most advanced nations in the world by the end of the 19th century, industrial output grew higher still in the 20th; between 1896 and 1913, industrial output in Germany doubled. Interwar turmoil After the First World War, Germany lost its resource rich territories of Alsace-Lorraine and the Saarland, while the Rhine and Ruhr regions were also occupied by France, and much of its industrial output was sent to other countries as war reparations. Hyperinflation in 1923 also saw the collapse of the German economy, and it was not until the late-1920s that economic recovery from the war truly began, although this was also short-lived. As Germany had been dependent on financial aid from the U.S. in order to recover and meet its reparation payments, the Great Depression in the U.S. had dire consequences for the German economy. From 1929 until 1932, industrial output fell once more, and many historians point to this economic difficulty as a catalyst for the rise of nationalism and fascism in Germany. The Nazi Party then ascended to power in 1933, the year the Depression ended, and the economy was restructured to support a war of expansion. Among other factors, this involved tax breaks for large businesses, allowing cartels to control local business, increasing average working hours, and prioritizing industrial employment by importing food from the east. The strength of Germany's industry then allowed the Axis powers to take control of most of Europe during the Second World War, but it was ultimately defeated by 1945. Post-war split Following the war, Germany was split into two separate states; commonly referred to as East and West Germany. The west was a liberal democracy with a free-market economy, while the east was a communist state with a command economy, yet both became leaders in their respective trading blocks during the Cold War. When looking at industrial growth over the next three decades, using output in 1963 as a benchmark, East Germany's output grew over nine times larger from 1949 to 1975, whereas West Germany's grew by a factor of six. It is important to remember, however, that the west was larger, more populous, and starting from a more industrially developed point than the east, therefore it was consistently more advanced. The West also had fewer restrictions placed on it from other nations after the war, and it played a leading role in European integration; whereas the East was influenced more heavily by the USSR and it had less trade with other advanced nations, which hindered its technological development. West Germany's output took a hit in the 1970s due to the 1973-1975 Recession, whereas the East's economy was protected as it had little trade with the U.S. and its partners. However, the West quickly recovered and economic stagnation in the East throughout the 1980s would contribute to the eventual collapse of the Eastern Bloc, and Germany was officially reunified in 1990.