How the 2008 financial crisis changed our world
How the 2008 financial crisis changed our world THE CHRONICLE OF BOOKS AND IDEAS . In "Crashed" (ed. Les Belles Lettres), historian Adam Tooze gives a detailed account of what happened during the 10 years following the 2008 financial crisis. According to him, this shock wave has considerably reshaped the functioning of our world. On September 16, 2008, in the aftermath of the bankruptcy of the American investment bank Lehman Brothers, the world economy sank into the worst crisis since 1929. To avoid chaos, all countries adopted, the United States in the lead, measures counter-cyclicals by massively injecting liquidity - especially dollars - into their savings. The banking and financial system seized up, unable to determine the value of sophisticated derivatives, the "subprimes" linked to "rotten" mortgages, which the financial industry, in search of maximum return with lower risk, had machined and sold to the chain to unseen investors. This event caus...