By Roben Farzad
The ghosts of 2008 linger. They haunt an economy that’s slowly and unevenly recovering from its worst shock since the heyday of bread lines and Hoovervilles. The financial crisis taught us that long-held assumptions and complacencies can and will fall apart in a subprime minute. Markets tanked. Credit dried up and marginally financed companies went under. Banks failed. Even today, whole subdivisions of newish homes remain abandoned, their copper pipes ripped out and their pools sporting a phosphorescent, almost otherworldly, shade of green.
Point is, the concept of risk is not to be underestimated. In mere months, American household wealth took a brutal, $14 trillion hit. That’s more than $120,000 per household. And lest you thought a snapback in 2009 and 2010 made things perfect once again, Europe’s fiddling last year while Rome (and Athens and Lisbon) burned sent volatility soaring and markets tanking all over again. Some economists swear we are only in the middle innings of a potentially decade-long financial crisis.
Read more: http://www.businessweek.com/finance/risk-on-was-2008-just-a-bad-dream-02262012.html
The ghosts of 2008 linger. They haunt an economy that’s slowly and unevenly recovering from its worst shock since the heyday of bread lines and Hoovervilles. The financial crisis taught us that long-held assumptions and complacencies can and will fall apart in a subprime minute. Markets tanked. Credit dried up and marginally financed companies went under. Banks failed. Even today, whole subdivisions of newish homes remain abandoned, their copper pipes ripped out and their pools sporting a phosphorescent, almost otherworldly, shade of green.
Point is, the concept of risk is not to be underestimated. In mere months, American household wealth took a brutal, $14 trillion hit. That’s more than $120,000 per household. And lest you thought a snapback in 2009 and 2010 made things perfect once again, Europe’s fiddling last year while Rome (and Athens and Lisbon) burned sent volatility soaring and markets tanking all over again. Some economists swear we are only in the middle innings of a potentially decade-long financial crisis.
Read more: http://www.businessweek.com/finance/risk-on-was-2008-just-a-bad-dream-02262012.html
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