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2007-2008 financial crisis

Thursday 2nd of October 2025

2007 financial crisis Compared with whites, minorities absorbed heavier losses in the housing collapse. From 2005 to 2009, “inflation-adjusted median wealth fell by 66% among Hispanic households and 53% among black households, compared  with just 16% among white households.” From 1984 to 2009, the wealth gap between whites and blacks nearly tripled, and in 2009, about a third of both black (35%) and Hispanic (31%) households had zero or negative worth, compared with 15% of white households. Ronald P. Formisano, Plutocracy in America, quoting from a Pew Research Center study  © 2017 Kwiple.com
2007 financial crisis “Did you ever hear the word ‘derivatives’?” he said. Do you think our  guys could have invented, say, credit default swaps? Give me a break! They couldn't have done the math.” “So having smart guys there almost caused Wall Street to collapse.” “You got it,” he said. “It took you a while, but you got it.” Calvin Trillin, conversation with a retirement-aged Ivy Leaguer from the '50s or early '60s, when only the lower third of a class went to Wall Street, unlike the geniuses from MIT and Caltech who went in the '80s or '90s © 2015 Kwiple.com
2007 financial crisis It wasn't a natural disaster. The bubble was man-made.  Elizabeth Warren © 2017 Kwiple.com
2007 financial crisis That's called business, by the way. Donald Trump, responding to the criticism that in 2006 he rooted for the impending financial crisis because it would give him an opportunity to buy real estate cheap © 2016 Kwiple.com
2007 financial crisis Why would we expect people from the classes that are most insulated from economic downturns to feel a sense of urgency about an economic crisis that hit the most vulnerable Americans the hardest? Nicholas Carnes, White-Collar Government © 2019 Kwiple.com
2007 financial crisis You only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out. Warren Buffett © 2018 Kwiple.com
2008 financial crisis The bailouts, the stimulus, the health-care debate: with each of these issues, the path of expertise led the Obama administration toward compromise with the power of wealth. And by the thinking of Washington, that is entirely as it should have been. Thomas Frank, Pity the Billionaire  © 2019 Kwiple.com
2008 financial crisis I've abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system. George W. Bush © 2019 Kwiple.com
2008 financial crisis The financial crisis of 2008-09 and the resulting recession were a historical watershed. The pre-crisis world was one of globalisation, belief in markets and confident democracies. Today's is a mirror image. Martin Wolf, Financial Times, October 9, 2018 © 2018 Kwiple.com
2008 financial crisis Perhaps the most devastating political legacy of the 2008 financial crisis was the sense among a large swath of the American population that the system was rigged. Homeowners and taxpayers took the fall and “nobody went to jail”, as financial reform activists still frequently point out. Rana Foroohar, Financial Times, February 13, 2022 © 2023 Kwiple.com
2008 financial crisis Trump's rise, like Warren's and Sander's, wouldn't have happened without the 2008 financial crisis. They were all part of the political backlash that followed the crisis-like aftershocks from an earthquake. One thing Trump's victory made clear was that the Obama's administration's response was more costly than initially assumed. The decision to forgo what Tim Geithner called “Old Testament justice" and concentrate the government's firepower on recapitalizing disgraced banks might have kept the economy afloat, but it also bred a deep resentment. Trump won because he consciously evoked the disgust people had come to feel toward Wall Street and Washington and made himself into an instrument to strike back. Joshua Green, in Rebels © 2024 Kwiple.com
 
2008 financial crisis We are fortunate that, thanks to globalization, policy decisions in the U.S. have been largely replaced by global market forces. Alan Greenspan, 2007 © 2018 Kwiple.com