The 2008 Financial Crisis

The stock market crash of 2008 was one of the most devastating of crashes ever. During the first few weeks of October the loss of money has been relentless. It caused people to lose such a significant amount of money. On September 16, 2008, failures of massive financial institutions in the United States, due mainly to exposure to packaged subprime loans and credit default swaps issued to insure these loans and their issuers this then rapidly devolved into a global crisis. There were failures in banks in not just America but a ton of other places as well. This started to result in a number of bank failures in Europe and high reductions in the value of stocks and commodities worldwide. There was also a failure in Iceland where banks had a devaluation

For example, in the United States, at least 15 banks failed in 2008, while several others were rescued through government intervention or acquisitions by other banks. On October 11, 2008, the head of the International Monetary Fund, better known as the IMF, warned that the world financial system was unsteadily balancing on the "brink of systemic meltdown". Ben Bernanke also spoke out and said it could lead into a “1930s style global financial and economic meltdown with catastrophic implications.” This was shown to be pretty much the end of the world, economically. This huge economic crisis caused multiple places to shut down their markets. This was quite comparable to Black Monday on 1987. Although there was a main symbol to the cause of this crash. It was the DJIA or the Dow Jones Industrial Average declaring their bankruptcy. This corporation was the fourth largest investment bank in the United States. On September 15 began their bankruptcy. This was recognized as the largest bankruptcy in the U.S. This bankruptcy led to a stock falling

The Dow went around 11,000 until September 29, when the Senate voted against the bailout bill. The Dow then suddenly fell 777.68 points, the most in any single day in history. Global markets also panicked such as, The MSCI World Index dropped 6 percent in one day, the most since its creation in 1970. Brazil's Ibovespa was halted after dropping 10 percent. The London FTSE dropped 15 percent. Gold soared to over $900 an ounce. Oil dropped to $95 a barrel.Congress finally passed the bailout bill in early October, but the damage had already been done. The Labor Department reported that the economy had lost a crazy amount of 159,000 jobs in the previous month. On Monday, October 6, the Dow dropped 800 points, closing below 10,000 for the first time since 2004. The Fed tried to prop up banks by lending $540 billion to money market funds. The funds needed the cash to meet a continuing barrage of redemptions. Since August, more than $500 billion had been withdrawn from money markets. On September 21, 2008 Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, the last two of the major investment banks still standing, convert from investment banks to bank holding companies to gain more flexibility for obtaining bailout funding. On September 25, 2008 After a 10-day bank run, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) seizes Washington Mutual, then the nation's largest savings