Global Financial Crisis
A housing bubble and unregulated derivatives crash the global economy, revealing the fragility of modern capitalism.
Explore this event on the interactive timeline →The subprime mortgage crisis cascaded into a global financial meltdown. Banks were bailed out, millions lost homes and jobs, and trust in institutions took a hit from which it has never recovered.
Perspective
The 2008 crisis is when the social contract broke for a generation. Banks got rescued; ordinary people got foreclosed. The rage this generated — Occupy, the Tea Party, eventually Trump and Sanders — is still the dominant force in Western politics.