The decade that passed by has not been such an easy one for the United States Economy. It seems to have set a precedent that whatever begins with a boom is sure to go out with a burst. Keeping true to its teaching the last decade did open splendidly. Let’s have a look at some of the important events of the last decade.

The dot-com bubble

The decade open the new millennia on a high note, riding on the dot-com bubble. But like all bubbles, this one too burst in March 2000 pushing the economy into a recession and killing off behemoths like WorldCom and jeopardizing companies like Cisco. The ill-effects of the bubble were further amplified due to the 9/11 attacks.

A Decade ravaged by Scandals

The last decade saw a lot of scandals, typically more than its share of those. Right from the great scandal of Enron to the bribery scandals of Lockheed and Siemens, this decade almost had it all. Also inclusive in these are the scandals of oil companies overstating their reserves.

It should be noted that the great Enron scandal was really rooted in the dot.com years – as was most of the other scandals associated with that era. The fact that it took a few years, after the crash and the fallout for investigations to commence and for charges to be filed (Ken Lay of Enron, for example) is more of a note of “resolve and resolution” being accomplished during the “last decade” because of the graft and exceptional greed of the prior decade.

Wars, Terrorism and Hurricanes

The consecutive wars that the US raised on Taliban and Iraq post 9/11has cost the country and the soldiers serving it a great deal. There were also other terrorism acts against the country and several internal terrorist acts as well.
Hurricane Katrina caused widespread economic damage to the city of New Orleans where the city is still recovering from its effects.

The Housing Bubble and Recent Recession

The US banking sector’s greed for more money led to the subprime mortgage crisis which contributed majorly to the Great Recession. The subprime crisis left a lot of Americans homeless and the recession added to their woes by mass lay-offs resulting in record unemployment. Further turmoil was created by the collapse of Lehman Brothers and value of securities backed by these mortgages and its impact on other large investment banks trading in mortgage backed securities. The early 2007 saw the collapse of the subprime mortgage industry with the markets entering into a long and painful bearish phase. However, the cause of the housing bubble was many folds; from greedy realtors not performing their due-diligence, to equity out buy-ups and remodels and new automobile purchases, to equity out college education funding. But it is said that the housing bubble was in fact created by the federal government, by introducing new regulations which later on backfired badly triggering the huge crises.

A lot more happened during the course of the last decade in terms of economics. However these are just a few and important ones amongst them.

(Inputs by Gary)