The 2008 Financial Crisis - 2117 Words

On September 15, 2008, Wall Street entered the largest financial crisis since the Great Depression. On a day that could have been called Black Monday, the Dow Jones Industrial average plummeted almost 500 points. Historically prominent investment giant Lehman Brothers filled for bankruptcy, while Bank of America bought out former powerhouse Merrill Lynch (Maloney and Lindeman 2008). The crisis enveloped the economy of the United States, as effects are still felt today. Experts still disagree about what exactly caused the greatest financial disaster since the Great Depression, but many point to the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 as a gateway to the rise of extreme laissez-faire policies that allowed Wall Street to take on incredible risk at the expense of taxpayers. In the wake of the crisis, politicians look for policies that reign in the power of Wall Street, but the fundamental relationship between economic and political power has made such regulation ineffective. The Gla ss-Steagall Act of 1933 was a direct response to the Great Depression of the 1930s. The years before the Depression were marked by robust financial growth, led by an expansion of credit through the policies of the Federal Reserve and new financial innovation, such as investment trusts (Neal and White 2012). Though these trusts were similar to a savings bank, they differed in that trusts were not regulated in which securities they could invest in and had had little government supervision. TheShow MoreRelated2008 Financial Crisis: Icelands Then Now Essay examples1558 Words   |  7 PagesCauses of the Crisis On September 15, 2008, the American bank Lehman Brothers, with holdings over 600 billion USD, filed bankruptcy. This was by far the biggest bankruptcy in U.S history and it marked the beginning and the largest financial crisis ever. How can one of the biggest banks in the world fail? How can a bankruptcy in US make someone on the other side of the world unemployed? The answer is Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs) and it all started by new innovations in the financial sector combinedRead MoreThe Financial Crisis Of 20081384 Words   |  6 PagesThe turmoil in the financial markets also known as the financial crisis of 2008 was considered the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Many areas of the United States suffered. The housing market plummeted and as a result of that, many evictions occurred, as well as foreclosures and unemployment. Leading up to the financial crash, most of the money that was made by investors was based on people speculating on investments li ke real estate, stocks, debt buying, and complex investmentRead MoreThe Financial Crisis Of 20081747 Words   |  7 PagesThe economic crisis of 2008 was one for the ages, it changed the world of investing forever. That year, the stock market crashed, bank failures and the infamous wall street bailout that can all be traced back to the subprime mortgage crisis.. The 2008 economic crisis rocked the global economy for the worst, and to this day the United States is trying to recover from the impact that the crisis had. In order to understand why exactly the banks failed people have to understand the subprime mortgageRead MoreThe Financial Crisis Of 20081817 Words   |  8 PagesThe financial crisis of 2008 did not arise by chance. The meltdown was precipitated by systematic striping away of the New Deal era policies of bank regulation. Most notable of these deregulatory acts was that of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999. This bill repealed the legislation which held commercial banks and investment banks separate. As the beginning of the 21 century approached many bankers clamored for an end to the policy of the â€Å"firewall† between Investment and commercial banks. Gramm-Leach-BlileyRead MoreFinancial Crisis 20085972 Words   |  24 PagesCORPORATE FINANCE THE GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS 2008 Group’s member:Nguyá »â€¦n NhÆ ° Nam (C)Phan Thu AnNguyá »â€¦n Thà ¹y DungHoà  ng Bà ¡ SÆ ¡nNgà ´ Thá »â€¹ à nh Tuyá º ¿tDate: 28/11/2014 | AbstractIn 2008 the world was fell into the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression of 1929-1933. Although this crisis has gone, however, its consequences for the economy of many countries is very serious, even now many nations are still struggling to escape difficulty. Just in a short period, the crisis originating from AmericaRead MoreThe Financial Crisis Of 2008 Essay2044 Words   |  9 PagesThe 2008 financial meltdown resulted in the most treacherous investment landscape observed since the great depression. The most notorious issue was the subprime mortgage crisis, which had a ripple effect felt through every market in the world. The banks, whose leverage rate should never have been higher than two times capitalization, surged as high as thirty to forty times market cap. With this level of exposure, any unforeseen market fluctuations could mean disaster. Lehman Brothers, the oldestRead MoreThe Financial Crisis Of 20081125 Words   |  5 PagesA mortgage meltdown and financial crisis of unbelievable magnitude was brewing and very few people, including politicians, the media, and the poor unsuspecting mortgage borrowers anticipated the ramifications that were about to occur. The financial crisis of 2008 was the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression; ultimately coalescing into the largest bankruptcies in world history--approximately 30 million people lost their jobs, trillions of dollars in wealth diminished, and millions ofRead MoreThe Financial Crisis Of 20081689 Words   |  7 PagesOur society seems to doing well since the financial crisis of 2008. The country is recovering from the Great Recession, unemployment is down and the global domestic product is up. People have jobs and are paying taxes. President Obama lowered our budget deficit and promised to make healthcare more available to all. On average, America is well on its way to recovery. But what about the people that slipped through the cracks of the financial stimulus pl an? These are the people that lost their jobsRead MoreThe Financial Crisis Of 2008 Essay2553 Words   |  11 PagesWhen you think of the 2008 financial crisis that affected not just the US economy, but the world as a whole, most average middle-class Americans won’t really know what triggered this economic disaster. Most will probably blame, and rightfully so, those large corporations on Wall Street. These corporations, which deal with insanely large amounts of money, will always be wary of their stocks decreasing. But they also know that 99% of the time, everything will go back to normal in the future. What theyRead MoreThe Financial Crisis Of 20082083 Words   |  9 PagesEver since the economic virus called â€Å"negative interest rates† scattered over European and later Japanese banks, our economic system has been the most unstable since the financial crisis of 2008. The virus, negative interest rates, is a concept in which the central bank charges interest in bor rowing money and holding an account. It was brought forth in efforts to increase economic growth by giving commercial banks a tax on the large amount of reserves they hold in the bank. In other words, commercial