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The Great Recession Of 2008: A Historical Analysis

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In the course American Global Context taught at Mount St. Mary’s University, eight significant historical events from 1898 to contemporary times are covered. These events range from the assassination of William McKinley to the Great Depression to Pearl Harbor. One of these events, the 9/11 terrorist attacks, occurred in the 21st century. If I had the ability to add another event that possesses historical significance it would also be from the 21st century. The Great Recession of 2008 is the event that I would pick as the ninth historical event. By looking at the details of what happened, what the recession revealed about America, and what changed as a result it is possible to understand the immense significance of the recession. Before …show more content…

credit insurers such as AIG). Firms/investors began to pull funding from any firm thought to be vulnerable to losses. The whole system collapsed as a result of mortgages being heavily leveraged and led to a financial meltdown ("The Recent Past."). The meltdown started to become visible when Bear Stearns was forced to sale in March of 2008. Then September of 2008 became an infamous month as Fannie and Freddie Mac were bailed out by the US government, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, Bank of America acquired Merrill Lynch, and AIG received emergency liquidity assistance from the Federal Reserve (Bernanke). Although some might erroneously believe that the Financial System does not greatly affect the Economy, Alan Blinder points out in his book After the Music Stopped: The Financial Crisis, the Response, and the Work Ahead that “… Finance is more like the circulatory system of the economic body. And if the blood stops flowing… well, you don’t want to think about it” (5). The worst macroeconomic performance in the post World War II US resulted from the financial crisis according to Blinder …show more content…

Recently, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York President, William Dudley, said there still needs to be work done to ensure that firms that are “too big to fail” could fail in an orderly way without taxpayer help (Tracy). There are also critics that say that it does not make sense to have the same regulators who failed to prevent the 2008 crisis as regulators today (Fontinelle). Thus, it seems with these two examples and other examples, one can argue that what has not changed as a result of the Great Recession is important as

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