Ten years ago, Lehman Brothers financial services filed for bankruptcy, fueling a crisis that shook confidence in Wall Street and causing the housing market to explode.
There’s evidence to suggest we’re in the midst of a steady recovery, but many Americans are still dealing with the fallout.
According to a survey from the Transamerica Center for Retirement, nearly six out of 10 workers say they have not fully recovered from the Great Recession. Seven percent says they might never recover.
Greg Ip of The Wall Street Journal shares his view on how the financial crisis has rocked the consumer ethos:
The failure of Lehman Brothers exposed how cavalier the world had been toward risk. Households had bought homes they thought could never go down in price, banks had made loans they thought would never default and repackaged them into securities to make them seem riskless and governments, convinced depressions were a thing of the past, had stood by.
Since then, they have sought to ensure it never happens again. And thus, the world has retreated from risk. That retreat has reshaped institutions, regulations and attitudes, and in the process the economy: it is why economic growth has been so durable yet so muted, with less of the risk-taking that both drives booms and busts and raises long-run growth.
With time, even the deepest traumas wear off, and there are signs that risk-taking is returning, though in different forms from before. What remains unclear is whether it paves the way for years more of stable, crisis-free growth, or yet another bust.
Here’s a series of graphics on how the financial crisis transformed America, from The Washington Post. And here’s a look at how the recession changed home buying, from The Wall Street Journal.
Is the economy really on the mend? Or are we edging towards another financial crisis? We’ll discuss with a panel of experts.
In the meantime, five analysts from The Wall Street Journal share their predictions about what might trigger the next recession.
*Show produced by Stef Collett, text by Kathryn Fink*.
GUESTS
Kai Ryssdal, Host and senior editor, Marketplace; @kairyssdal
Nela Richardson, Investment strategist, Edward Jones; @NelaRichardson
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