The events covered are: Great Depression, Recession under Clinton, and our current Recession.

I am not sure whether or not our current recession is covered in the textbook but I felt it was best to step a little out of bounds and cover something we can all relate to.

Throughout American history, we have had an incredibly strong economy that produced the highest standard of living in the world. However, we have also faced many difficult times, three of which will be covered here. It seems that our economic model must experience an economic downturn every few years and some of the worst are the Great Depression, the Recession in the early 90’s and today’s Recession. Each event has been brought about by the economic leaders of or country such as banks and big business. Although the blame is not solely theirs, their practices and policies have played a pivotal role in these economic downturns.

The reason these events are so interconnected is that we see a recurring theme when we examine the events that led up to them. Deregulation and unscrupulous money practices have led banks and big business to make risky decisions that have a tendency to backfire and bring the most pain to those at the bottom of the ladder. The problem each time is that too many risky decisions have been made and too much money has been lost. This sets off a panic in which the stock market falls and in 1987, it fell by more than 20% for a total of more than 500 points.

The problem is that businesses will continue to make risky decisions to attempt and earn a profit and these recessions will continue to occur. The fundamental link between these events is that while we live in a capitalistic society, companies will continue to go to greater lengths to attempt and earn more money and even though some times, profits will be extraordinary, other times millions of people will lose their life savings. I am not sure if increased profits are worth risking peoples lives for.