Great Recession
The 2007–2009 Great Financial Crisis and deep recession: U.S. housing finance, runnable shadow banking, and global dollar funding strains produced the worst postwar contraction until COVID-19—and a decade of contested policy legacies.
Subprime-mortgage losses ramified through securitization, repo markets, and sponsor-backed vehicles until Bear Stearns, Lehman, AIG, and money-market funds signaled systemic panic. Credit froze; trade finance and emerging markets transmitted stress globally.
Real GDP and employment cratered; long-term unemployment and foreclosures scarred households. Fiscal stimulus (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act), TARP capital injections, Fed emergency facilities, and near-zero rates competed with political backlash over bailouts and moral hazard.
Reforms and slow recovery
Dodd-Frank expanded bank supervision, created orderly-resolution planning, reshaped derivatives markets, and established the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau—unfinished business still argued in Congress and courts. Labor markets healed slowly; some regions never regained pre-crisis prime-age employment rates on old trajectories.
State-level lens
Sun Belt housing busts and manufacturing belts tied to autos showed geography mattered as much as national aggregates—motivation for sub-national labor and trade visualization when those datasets mature here.