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America's Political Crisis: The Unsustainable State in aTime of Unraveling

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2009

Lawrence Jacobs  and
Desmond King
Lawrence Jacobs
Affiliation:
University of Minnesota
Desmond King
Affiliation:
Nuffield College, Oxford
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Extract

The American economy and financial system is experiencing upheaval ona scale not seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s. A numberof the largest and most established banks and investment firms havedeclared bankruptcy (including Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers) orbeen taken over at fire-sale rates (as was the case, for example,with Merrill Lynch). In the fall of 2008, Congress and the U.S.Treasury along with the Federal Reserve Bank committed more thaneight trillion dollars in payments, loans, and guarantees of varioussorts to prop up financial institutions (including thesemi-governmental mortgage entities, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) aswell as the country's largest insurer, American International Group(AIG). The speed, number, and scope of these interventions lackhistorical precedent.

Type
In Focus: Our Political and Financial Crisis of2008
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 42 , Issue 2 , April 2009 , pp. 277 - 285
Copyright
Copyright © The American Political Science Association 2009

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