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World Economic Crisis of 2008
I added the commentary above about a world crisis that peoples of the world faced in 1999 to provide a perspective on the current world crisis that we again face today -- essentially a world economic meltdown that precipitated in stock market collapse in the United States in the Fall of 2008.
The telltale signs begun early in the year when there was a sharp drop in stock market in January 2008 due to weaknesses in a number of financial institutions, partly due to the burst of the "housing bubble". The stock market briefly recovered, after some US government intervention. However, the crisis came to a vegeance during the late Summer and Fall 2008 when it became apparent that almost all financial institutions were so deep in the "housing bubble" mess.
The US Congress tried to pass a bailout for the banks and financial institutions, but at the time a $700 billion dollars bailout was not only unheard of, but it was meant to cover the blunders from years of speculation by high-paid bankers, insurance salesmen and Wall Street speculators -- some earning salaries and bonuses in tens and hundreds of millions, while their companies lost hundreds of billions.
The losses were due partly to bad investments linked to the housing speculation during the past few decades but came to a frenzy during the past few years before the market collapsed in 2008. To minimize the downside, insurance were taken out to cover any potential downside in case their investment did not pan out. Some investment bank companies further fueled the easy flow of money to these risky investment by offering "investment risk insurance" to their clients. In turn, these investment companies turned to larger insurance companies to cover their own risks. Big insurance companies, like ING, were so willing to provide such "investment risk insurance" to banks and other financial institutions because they never conceived the possibility that "strong"and large banking companies and Wall Street companies will never default.