| abstract
| - Beginning in the United States in December 2007 (and with much greater intensity since September 2008), much of the industrialized world entered into the largest Recession seen since the Second World War. This global recession took place in an economic environment characterized by various imbalances and was sparked by the outbreak of the financial crisis of 2007–2010. In July 2009, it was announced that a growing number of economists believed that the recession may have ended, though this failed to connect with the majority of people, as job losses were still ongoing, and unemployment had recently gone past 10% in the United States alone. The financial crisis has been linked to reckless and unsustainable lending practices resulting from the deregulation and securitization of real estate mortgages in the United States, as well as the general unregulated activities of the financial sector as a whole. The US mortgage-backed securities, which had risks that were hard to assess, were marketed around the world. A more broad based credit boom fed a global speculative bubble in real estate and equities, which served to reinforce the risky lending practices. The precarious financial situation was made more difficult by a sharp increase in oil and food prices. The emergence of Sub-prime loan losses in 2007 began the crisis and exposed other risky loans and over-inflated asset prices. With loan losses mounting and the fall of Lehman Brothers on September 15, 2008, a major panic broke out on the inter-bank loan market. As share and housing prices declined many large and well established investment and commercial banks in the United States and Europe suffered huge losses and even faced bankruptcy, resulting in massive public financial assistance, better known as the Bailouts. The global recession resulted in a sharp drop in international trade, rising unemployment and slumping commodity prices. In December 2008, the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) declared that the United States had been in recession since December 2007. The recovery began in late 2010, and didn't really take off until 2011. The Great Recession was considered the worst since the Great Depression of the 1930s, and the worst in a generation prior to the Second Depression. The conditions leading up to the crisis, characterised by an exorbitant rise in asset prices and associated boom in economic demand, are considered a result of the extended period of easily available credit, inadequate regulation and oversight, as well as increasing inequality. The US is often blamed for the recession. The recession renewed interest in Keynesian economic ideas on how to combat recessionary conditions, no more so evident than the practices of US President Barack Obama, who's efforts to inject capitol into the market are widely credited for preventing the Great Recession from becoming a full depression. Fiscal and monetary policies were significantly eased to stem the recession and financial risks. The causes of the Recession are almost identical to those that caused both the Second Depression, and almost every other major economic crisis in the Capitalist Era.
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