Great Recession

Great Recession, economic recession that was precipitated in the United States by the financial crisis of 2007–08 and quickly spread to other countries. Beginning in late 2007 and lasting until mid-2009, it was the longest and deepest economic downturn in many countries, including the United States, since the Great Depression (1929–c. 1939).

The financial crisis, a severe contraction of liquidity in global financial markets, began in 2007 as a result of the bursting of the U.S. housing bubble. From 2001 successive decreases in the prime rate (the interest rate that banks charge their “prime,” or low-risk, customers) had enabled banks to issue mortgage loans at lower interest rates to millions of customers who normally would not have qualified for them (see subprime mortgage; subprime lending), and the ensuing purchases greatly increased demand for new housing, pushing home prices ever higher. When interest rates finally began to climb in 2005, demand for housing, even among well-qualified borrowers, declined, causing home prices to fall. Partly because of the higher interest rates, most subprime borrowers, the great majority of whom held adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs), could no longer afford their loan payments. Nor could they save themselves, as they formerly could, by borrowing against the increased value of their homes or by selling their homes at a profit. (Indeed, many borrowers, both prime and subprime, found themselves “underwater,” meaning that they owed more on their mortgage loans than their homes were worth.) As the number of foreclosures increased, banks ceased lending to subprime customers, which further reduced demand and prices.

As the subprime mortgage market collapsed, many banks found themselves in serious trouble, because a significant portion of their assets had taken the form of subprime loans or bonds created from subprime loans together with less-risky forms of consumer debt (see mortgage-backed security; MBS). In part because the underlying subprime loans in any given MBS were difficult to track, even for the institution that owned them, banks began to doubt each other’s solvency, leading to an interbank credit freeze, which impaired the ability of any bank to extend credit even to financially healthy customers, including businesses. Accordingly, businesses were forced to reduce their expenses and investments, leading to widespread job losses, which predictably reduced demand for their products, because many of their former customers were now unemployed or underemployed. As the portfolios of even prestigious banks and investment firms were revealed to be largely fictional, based on nearly worthless (“toxic”) assets, many such institutions applied for government bailouts, sought mergers with healthier firms, or declared bankruptcy. Other major businesses whose products were generally sold with consumer loans suffered significant losses. The car companies General Motors and Chrysler, for example, declared bankruptcy in 2009 and were forced to accept partial government ownership through bailout programs. During all of this, consumer confidence in the economy was understandably reduced, leading most Americans to curtail their spending in anticipation of harder times ahead, a trend that dealt another blow to business health. All these factors combined to produce and prolong a deep recession in the United States. From the beginning of the recession in December 2007 to its official end in June 2009, real gross domestic product (GDP)—i.e., GDP as adjusted for inflation or deflation—declined by 4.3 percent, and unemployment increased from 5 percent to 9.5 percent, peaking at 10 percent in October 2009.

(Read Lee Iacocca’s Britannica entry on Chrysler.)

As millions of people lost their homes, jobs, and savings, the poverty rate in the United States increased, from 12.5 percent in 2007 to more than 15 percent in 2010. In the opinion of some experts, a greater increase in poverty was averted only by federal legislation, the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), which provided funds to create and preserve jobs and to extend or expand unemployment insurance and other safety net programs, including food stamps. Notwithstanding those measures, during 2007–10 poverty among both children and young adults (those aged 18–24) reached about 22 percent, representing increases of 4 percent and 4.7 percent, respectively. Much wealth was lost as U.S. stock prices—represented by the S&P 500 index—fell by 57 percent between 2007 and 2009 (by 2013 the S&P had recovered that loss, and it soon greatly exceeded its 2007 peak). Altogether, between late 2007 and early 2009, American households lost an estimated $16 trillion in net worth; one quarter of households lost at least 75 percent of their net worth, and more than half lost at least 25 percent. Households headed by younger adults, particularly by persons born in the 1980s, lost the most wealth, measured as a percentage of what had been accumulated by earlier generations in similar age groups. They also took the longest time to recover, and some of them still had not recovered even 10 years after the end of the recession. In 2010 the wealth of the median household headed by a person born in the 1980s was nearly 25 percent below what earlier generations of the same age group had accumulated; the shortfall increased to 41 percent in 2013 and remained at more than 34 percent as late as 2016. Those setbacks led some economists to speak of a “lost generation” of young persons who, because of the Great Recession, would remain poorer than earlier generations for the rest of their lives.

Losses of wealth and speed of recovery also varied considerably by socioeconomic class prior to the downturn, with the wealthiest groups suffering the least (in percentage terms) and recovering the soonest. For such reasons, it is generally agreed that the Great Recession worsened inequality of wealth in the United States, which had already been significant. According to one study, during the first two years after the official end of the recession, from 2009 to 2011, the aggregate net worth of the richest 7 percent of households increased by 28 percent while that of the lower 93 percent declined by 4 percent. The richest 7 percent thus increased their share of the nation’s total wealth from 56 percent to 63 percent. Another study found that between 2010 and 2013 the aggregate net worth of the richest 1 percent of Americans increased by 7.8 percent, representing an increase of 1.4 percent in their share of the nation’s total wealth (from 33.9 percent to 35.3 percent).

As the financial crisis spread from the United States to other countries, particularly in western Europe (where several major banks had invested heavily in American MBSs), so too did the recession. Most industrialized countries experienced economic slowdowns of varying severity (notable exceptions were China, India, and Indonesia), and many responded with stimulus packages similar to the ARRA. In some countries the recession had serious political repercussions. In Iceland, which was particularly hard-hit by the financial crisis and suffered a severe recession, the government collapsed, and the country’s three largest banks were nationalized. In Latvia, which, along with the other Baltic countries, was also affected by the financial crisis, the country’s GDP shrank by more than 25 percent in 2008–09, and unemployment reached 22 percent during the same period. Meanwhile, Spain, Greece, Ireland, Italy, and Portugal suffered sovereign debt crises that required intervention by the European Union, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and resulted in the imposition of painful austerity measures. In all the countries affected by the Great Recession, recovery was slow and uneven, and the broader social consequences of the downturn—including, in the United States, lower fertility rates, historically high levels of student debt, and diminished job prospects among young adults—were expected to linger for many years.