Graph and download economic data for Equity Market Volatility Tracker: Financial Crises (EMVFINCRISES) from Jan 1985 to Oct 2025 about volatility, uncertainty, equity, financial, and USA.

The Long Depression was, by a large margin, the longest-lasting recession in U.S. history. It began in the U.S. with the Panic of 1873, and lasted for over five years. This depression was the largest in a series of recessions at the turn of the 20th century, which proved to be a period of overall stagnation as the U.S. financial markets failed to keep pace with industrialization and changes in monetary policy. Great Depression The Great Depression, however, is widely considered to have been the most severe recession in U.S. history. Following the Wall Street Crash in 1929, the country's economy collapsed, wages fell and a quarter of the workforce was unemployed. It would take almost four years for recovery to begin. Additionally, U.S. expansion and integration in international markets allowed the depression to become a global event, which became a major catalyst in the build up to the Second World War. Decreasing severity When comparing recessions before and after the Great Depression, they have generally become shorter and less frequent over time. Only three recessions in the latter period have lasted more than one year. Additionally, while there were 12 recessions between 1880 and 1920, there were only six recessions between 1980 and 2020. The most severe recession in recent years was the financial crisis of 2007 (known as the Great Recession), where irresponsible lending policies and lack of government regulation allowed for a property bubble to develop and become detached from the economy over time, this eventually became untenable and the bubble burst. Although the causes of both the Great Depression and Great Recession were similar in many aspects, economists have been able to use historical evidence to try and predict, prevent, or limit the impact of future recessions.

The statisic shows the concern among Americans around the impact of the European financial crisis on the United States economy. According to the source, 15 percent of those polled stated that they were 'not too concerned' about the impact of the European financial crisis on the U.S. economy.

Graph and download economic data for Dates of U.S. recessions as inferred by GDP-based recession indicator (JHDUSRGDPBR) from Q4 1967 to Q1 2025 about recession indicators, GDP, and USA.

The global financial crisis, triggered by the 2007 subprime mortgage crisis in the United States, has severely affected financial systems and real economies worldwide, leading to the most serious economic recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Behind these two economic recessions, despite different historical contexts and approaches to problem-solving, there are common characteristics associated with the mutual impact of financial crises: the essence of a financial crisis lies in financial instability, reflecting the fluctuations in asset prices. In addition to these two severe financial crises, financial crises of varying scales have occurred intermittently internationally. Considering the past and present, people need to think deeper about how to prevent such crises from happening again, especially mainstream macroeconomic thinking that has far-reaching effects should be reassessed.

This paper assesses the validity of comparisons between the current financial crisis and past crises in the United States. We highlight aspects of two National Banking Era crises (the Panic of 1873 and the Panic of 1907) that are relevant for comparison with the Panic of 2008. In 1873, overinvestment in railroad debt and the default of railroad companies on that debt led to the failure of numerous brokerage houses, precursor to the modern investment bank. During the Panic of 1907, panic-related deposit withdrawals centered on the less regulated trust companies, which had only indirect access to the existing lender of last resort, similar to investment banks in 2008. The popular press has made numerous references to the banking crises of the Great Depression as relevant comparisons to the recent crisis. This paper argues that such an analogy is inaccurate. The previous banking crises in U.S. history reflected widespread depositor withdrawals whereas the recent panic arose from counterparty solvency fears and large counterparty exposures among large complex financial intermediaries. In historical incidents, monitoring counterparty exposures was standard banking practice and the exposures were smaller. From this perspective, the lessons from the past appear less directly relevant for the current crisis.

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 financial crisis and recession that began in 2007 brought a sharp increase in the number of bank failures in the United States. This article investigates characteristics of banks that failed and regional patterns in bank failure rates during 2007-2010. The article compares the recent experience with that of 1987-1992, when the United States last experienced a high number of bank failures.

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 Nov 2025 about peak, trough, recession indicators, and USA.

From the Summer of 2007 until the end of 2009 (at least), the world was gripped by a series of economic crises commonly known as the Global Financial Crisis (2007-2008) and the Great Recession (2008-2009). The financial crisis was triggered by the collapse of the U.S. housing market, which caused panic on Wall Street, the center of global finance in New York. Due to the outsized nature of the U.S. economy compared to other countries and particularly the centrality of U.S. finance for the world economy, the crisis spread quickly to other countries, affecting most regions across the globe. By 2009, global GDP growth was in negative territory, with international credit markets frozen, international trade contracting, and tens of millions of workers being made unemployed.

Global similarities, global differences

Since the 1980s, the world economy had entered a period of integration and globalization. This process particularly accelerated after the collapse of the Soviet Union ended the Cold War (1947-1991). This was the period of the 'Washington Consensus', whereby the U.S. and international institutions such as the World Bank and IMF promoted policies of economic liberalization across the globe. This increasing interdependence and openness to the global economy meant that when the crisis hit in 2007, many countries experienced the same issues. This is particularly evident in the synchronization of the recessions in the most advanced economies of the G7. Nevertheless, the aggregate global GDP number masks the important regional differences which occurred during the recession. While the more advanced economies of North America, Western Europe, and Japan were all hit hard, along with countries who are reliant on them for trade or finance, large emerging economies such as India and China bucked this trend. In particular, China's huge fiscal stimulus in 2008-2009 likely did much to prevent the global economy from sliding further into a depression. In 2009, while the United States' GDP sank to -2.6 percent, China's GDP, as reported by national authorities, was almost 10 percent.

Graph and download economic data for Real-time Sahm Rule Recession Indicator (SAHMREALTIME) from Dec 1959 to Sep 2025 about recession indicators, academic data, and USA.

Abstract The paper aims to analyze the wide range of unconventional monetary policies adopted in the U.S. since the 2007-2008 financial crises, focusing on conceptual aspects, the implementation of different programs and measures adopted by FED, and their effectiveness. It is argued that the use of credit and quasi-debt policies had significant effects on the financial conditions and on a set of macroeconomic variables in the US, such as output and employment. This result raises questions about the effectiveness of conventional monetary policy and the forward guidance, both of which were key elements in the New Macroeconomics Consensus view that preceded the 2007-2008 financial crisis.

The Federal National Mortgage Association, commonly known as Fannie Mae, was created by the U.S. congress in 1938, in order to maintain liquidity and stability in the domestic mortgage market. The company is a government-sponsored enterprise (GSE), meaning that while it was a publicly traded company for most of its history, it was still supported by the federal government. While there is no legally binding guarantee of shares in GSEs or their securities, it is generally acknowledged that the U.S. government is highly unlikely to let these enterprises fail. Due to these implicit guarantees, GSEs are able to access financing at a reduced cost of interest. Fannie Mae's main activity is the purchasing of mortgage loans from their originators (banks, mortgage brokers etc.) and packaging them into mortgage-backed securities (MBS) in order to ease the access of U.S. homebuyers to housing credit. The early 2000s U.S. mortgage finance boom During the early 2000s, Fannie Mae was swept up in the U.S. housing boom which eventually led to the financial crisis of 2007-2008. The association's stated goal of increasing access of lower income families to housing finance coalesced with the interests of private mortgage lenders and Wall Street investment banks, who had become heavily reliant on the housing market to drive profits. Private lenders had begun to offer riskier mortgage loans in the early 2000s due to low interest rates in the wake of the "Dot Com" crash and their need to maintain profits through increasing the volume of loans on their books. The securitized products created by these private lenders did not maintain the standards which had traditionally been upheld by GSEs. Due to their market share being eaten into by private firms, however, the GSEs involved in the mortgage markets began to also lower their standards, resulting in a 'race to the bottom'. The fall of Fannie Mae The lowering of lending standards was a key factor in creating the housing bubble, as mortgages were now being offered to borrowers with little or no ability to repay the loans. Combined with fraudulent practices from credit ratings agencies, who rated the junk securities created from these mortgage loans as being of the highest standard, this led directly to the financial panic that erupted on Wall Street beginning in 2007. As the U.S. economy slowed down in 2006, mortgage delinquency rates began to spike. Fannie Mae's losses in the mortgage security market in 2006 and 2007, along with the losses of the related GSE 'Freddie Mac', had caused its share value to plummet, stoking fears that it may collapse. On September 7th 2008, Fannie Mae was taken into government conservatorship along with Freddie Mac, with their stocks being delisted from stock exchanges in 2010. This act was seen as an unprecedented direct intervention into the economy by the U.S. government, and a symbol of how far the U.S. housing market had fallen.

The Great Recession was a period of economic contraction which came in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis of 2007-2008. The recession was triggered by the collapse of the U.S. housing market and subsequent bankruptcies among Wall Street financial institutions, the most significant of which being the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in September 2008, the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history. These economic convulsions caused consumer confidence, measured by the Consumer Confidence Index (CCI), to drop sharply in 2007 and the beginning of 2008. How does the Consumer Confidence Index work? The CCI measures household's expectation of their future economic situation and, consequently, their likely future spending and savings decisions. A score of 100 in the index would indicate a neutral economic outlook, with consumers neither being optimistic nor pessimistic about the near future. Scores below 100 are then more pessimistic, while scores above 100 indicate optimism about the economy. Consumer confidence can have a self-fulfilling effect on the economy, as when consumers are pessimistic about the economy, they tend to save and postpone spending, contracting aggregate demand and causing the economy to slow down. Conversely, when consumers are optimistic and willing to spend, this can have a reinforcing effect as wages and employment may rise when consumers spend more. CCI and the Great Recession As the reality of the trouble which the U.S. financial sector was in set in over 2007, consumer confidence dropped sharply from being slightly positive, to being deeply pessimistic by the Summer of 2008. While confidence began to slowly rebound up until September 2008, with the panic caused by Lehman's bankruptcy and the freezing of new credit creation, the CCI plummeted once more, reaching its lowest point during the recession in February 2008. The U.S. government stepped in to prevent the bankruptcy of AIG in 2008, promising to do the same for any future possible failures in the financial system. This 'backstopping' policy, whereby the government assured that the economy would not be allowed to fall further into crisis, along with the Federal Reserve's unconventional monetary policies used to restart the economy, contributed to a rebound in consumer confidence in 2009 and 2010. In spite of this, consumers still remained pessimistic about the economy.

Do international lenders of last resort create financial instability by generating moral hazard? The evidence is thin and plagued with measurement error. We use the number of American troops hosted by third countries to measure the strength of American commitment to ensuring the countries’ economic health. We test several hypotheses against a dataset covering about sixty-eight countries between 1960 and 2009. Using evidence from fixed-effects and instrumental-variable models, we find that increasing the number of US troops by one standard deviation above the mean raises the probability of a financial crisis in the host country by up to 13 percentage points. We also investigate the channels through which moral hazard materializes. Countries with more US troops conduct more expansionary fiscal and monetary policies, implement riskier financial regulations, and receive more capital, especially from US banks. While many scholars of international relations view the American overseas military presence as a source of stability, we identify an underexplored mechanism by which it generates instability.

Countries become more politically polarized and fractionalized following financial crises, reducing the likelihood of major financial reforms precisely when they might have especially large benefits. The evidence from a large sample of countries provides strong support for the hypotheses that following a financial crisis, voters become more ideologically extreme and ruling coalitions become weaker, independently of whether they were initially in power. The evidence that increased polarization and weaker governments reduce the chances of financial reform and that financial crises lead to legislative gridlock and anemic reform is less clear-cut. The US debt overhang resolution is discussed as an illustration.

US bank participation in credit derivatives. US banks’ holding of credit derivatives rapidly increased between 1997 and 2007 and started a steady decline after 2011. We used this trend to divide our analysis into three subperiods, pre-financial crisis, during crisis, and post financial crisis. We found that banks are more likely to participate in the credit derivatives market if they were larger, were more experienced in derivatives, held higher risk assets, and had less core capital than others. The results from a more detailed analysis of the three subperiods showed that the financial crisis represented a transitional period for US banks’ holdings of credit derivatives. The results indicate that US banks increased their hedging and increased their appetite for risk. The financial crisis also represented a structural change in type of loans held by participating US banks. The results show that US banks converged towards hedging around the financial crisis and away from speculation in credit derivatives. The increase hedging may allow US banks to increase their appetite for risky assets.

The Great Recession (2008-2009) was an economic recession largely caused by the collapse of the U.S. housing market and the subsequent financial crisis on Wall Street. The administration of President George W. Bush took unprecedented measures to backstop the U.S. financial system and wider economy in 2008 with its Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). This program was designed to purchase non-performing assets from financial institutions, such as subprime mortgage loans and related financial instruments, which had been responsible for the crisis. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and his department were given an initial authorization to spend up to 700 billion U.S. dollars on the program, although this was later lowered to 475 billion. From 2008 to 2012, the TARP program disbursed 417.6 billion U.S. dollars to purchase troubled assets and equity in the companies which held such assets. Of these funds, the majority was spent on the bank support programs, while significant amounts also went to bailouts of the car manufacturing industry and to the insurance giant American International Group (AIG).

We examine the effects of constituents, special interests, and ideology on congressional voting on two of the most significant pieces of legislation in US economic history. Representatives whose constituents experience a sharp increase in mortgage defaults are more likely to support the Foreclosure Prevention Act, especially in competitive districts. Interestingly, representatives are more sensitive to defaults of their own-party constituents. Special interests in the form ofhigher campaign contributions from the financial industry increase the likelihood of supporting the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act. However, ideologically conservative representatives are less responsive to both constituent and special interests. (JEL D72, G21, G28)

Formaat: MP4-fileOmvang: 255,8 MbGeen informatie over auteursrecht beschikbaar.Online beschikbaar: [06-01-2015]Title: The Financial Crisis: Implications for Washington, Wall Street and Main StreetUploaded on Oct 12, 2010Samenvatting:As the crisis in the U.S. financial markets worsened and the credit markets tightened, all eyes were on the Bush administration`s $700 billion bailout plan passed by the U.S. Senate on Oct. 1. Shortly before the Senate voted, a panel of Cornell experts met in Goldwin Smith Hall to discuss the circumstances that led to the collapse and potential courses of action.(Oct 1, 2008 at Cornell University)NB: Datering op YouTube website klopt niet Panelists:- Robert C. Andolina, visiting Senior Lecturer of Finance and former Managing Director at Lehman Brothers- David Easley, Henry Scarborough Professor of Social Sciences- Elizabeth Sanders, Professor of GovernmentThe event was organized by the Cornell International Affairs Review.Standard YouTube License.