Financial & economic crises

Great Recession 2008

 * It is widely believed that the global savings glut played a key role
 * The rapid growth of shadow banking and the use of complex structured products have been seen as one of the main causes of the financial crisis. The shadow banking system had the means to create a lot of “parking space” for foreign money. Securitisation can manufacture large amounts of AAA-rated securities provided there is readily available raw material, that is, assets that one can pool and tranche. The United States did have a large latent pool of assets: housing. Any house that was debt-free or underleveraged was potential raw material for securitisation.
 * One of the factor that led to increased consumer spending in the US is the so-called wealth effect. The wealth effect is the change in spending that accompanies a change in real or perceived wealth - for example, the assessed value of their home increases, or a stock they own goes up in price. Demand for some goods (called inferior goods) decreases with increasing wealth. For example, consider consumption of cheap fast food versus steak. As someone becomes wealthier, their demand for cheap fast food is likely to decrease, and their demand for more expensive steak may increase, which has actually happened. In the Citigroup "Plutonomy, Buying Luxury, Explaining Global Imbalances, Kapur et al, Citigroup, Oct 16, 2005" report it was stated that the demand for luxury goods has indeed increased dramatically, before the crisis as well as after the crisis . (Heterodox) economists expect households to consume based on their wealth.
 * The Troubled Asset Relief Program is, in plain English, the massive government capital injection/partly-nationalization (i.e. bailout). Put more eloquently, when there is a serious enough shortage of collateral, the government will find it optimal to alleviate the situation by supplying collateral that is backed up by taxpayer money.

Savings and loan crises
The Savings and loan crisis (Bausparkasse/Spar- und Darlehenskasse)of the 1980s and 1990s (commonly dubbed the S&L crisis) was the failure of 1,043 out of the 3,234 savings and loan associations in the United States from 1986 to 1995

Latin American debt crisis
The Latin American debt crisis originated in the early 1980s (and for some countries starting in the 1970s), often known as the "lost decade", when Latin American countries reached a point where their foreign debt exceeded their earning power and they were not able to repay it

Libor scandal
The Libor scandal was a series of fraudulent actions connected to the Libor (London Interbank Offered Rate) and also the resulting investigation and reaction. Libor underpins approximately $350 trillion in derivatives. It is currently administered by NYSE Euronext, which took over running the Libor in January 2014.