The Great Recession

The Great Recession began in December 2007 and lasted eighteen months. This was the longest economic decline since The Great Depression of 1929 to 1941.

The NBER defines an economic recession as: “a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales.”

According to Elizabeth Warren, United States Senator from Massachusetts, in the Sat 17 Sep 2016 article,” Elizabeth Warren is still mad about the financial crash, and we should be too,” there are facts about the recession that should not be ignored.

Warren’s focus is primarily on the lack of appropriate prosecution of the criminal players in the aftermath of the financial catastrophe, a shameful fact in our history, which should not be dismissed.

Factors leading to the Great Recession:

housing bubble

easy credit

subprime lending

and not to be overlooked is the role of Brooksley E. Born an American Attorney who (becoming aware of the looming problem of OTC derivatives as chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission [CFTC] )  correctly warned, of the need for oversight regarding  the highly risky derivatives market.

And also of critical importance is The Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan’s refusal to depart from his long held ideology of a free market and refusal to use regulation