The following is an excerpt form Joseph Stiglitz’s “FREEFALL, FREE MARKETS AND THE SINKING OF THE GLOBAL ECONOMY” published in 2009 with an “Afterward” in 2010:
“In October 208 America’s economy was in freefall, poised to take down much of the world economy with it. We had had stock market crashes, credit crunches, housing slumps, and inventory adjustments before. But not since the Great Depression had all of these come together. And never before had the storm clouds moved so quickly over the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, gathering strength as they went. But while everything seemed to be falling apart at the same time, there was a common source: the reckless lending of the financial sector, which had fed the housing bubble, which eventually burst. What was unfolding was the predictable and predicted consequences of the bursting of the bubble. Such bubbles and their aftermath are as old as capitalism and banking itself. It was just the United States had been spared such bubbles for decades after the Great Depression because of the regulations the government had put in place after that trauma. Once deregulation had taken hold, it was only a matter of time before these horrors of the past would return….”
