Lessons we learned from the global financial crisis: a minskian interpretation of the causes, the fed's bail-out, and the future

Abstract

This paper will begin with a quick overview of the causes of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) that began in 2007. There were many contributing factors but among the most important were rising inequality and stagnant incomes for most workers in America, growing private sector debt in the US and many other countries, financialization of the global economy (itself a very complex process), deregulation and desupervision of financial institutions, and overly tight fiscal policy in many nations. We then move to an examination of the US government’s bail-out of the global financial system. While other governments played a role (some smaller governments bailed-out their own financial institutions, and the UK government as well as the European Central Bank—ECB—assisted institutions across borders), the US Treasury and the Federal Reserve Bank (Fed) assumed much of the responsibility for the bail-out.