The 2008–2009 Financial Crisis in Historical Context

Abstract

The 2008–2009 financial crisis was the largest since Great Depression of the 1930s. Several reasons were asserted on why such a massive crisis happened in the first place. However, most of the explanations put forth were about proximate causes of the crisis and very little attention was given to the underlying and fundamental causes of it. The causes of the global financial crisis were, ostensibly, the formation of a housing bubble and ensuing subprime mortgage crisis in the US economy. However, the true story of the crisis is much more complicated than this. Actually, the fundamental causes, which stemmed from systemic problems in the global economy, paved the way for economic instabilities throughout the world and numerous financial crises occurred from 1980s on. These fundamental causes include (a) failure of transforming economies from extensive-production to intensive-production, (b) the rise of the neoliberalism, (c) ensuing financialization of the world economy and (d) global instabilities witnessed in the neoliberal era.