OUR ECONOMIC CRISIS

When the meltdown happened in 2008, I was 11. Sixth grade. I didn't really understand what was happening at all. All I remember is that my parents were constantly stressed, and every family gathering seemed to consist of a lot of grown-up economic talk that I couldn't follow. 2008 was two years after my little brother was born and my grandparents were coming from China to live with us, and my family was trying to look for a new house to upgrade to because our small 2 room condo simply could not house all of us anymore. However, that's when the housing market was in shambles. Everyone trying to sell knew they couldn't get a good price for what their homes were worth, and no one was buying. My parents had to sell our condo in order to buy a new home, but after our home was on the list for weeks and had no offers, they had no choice but to continuously lower the selling price. Eventually, we decided we couldn't sell at the time, and decided to rent / lease the condo out. We only finally sold our old condo in 2012, when the market was slowly crawling back up onto its feet.

I'm not sure if the economic crisis (as well as the economic crises we struggle day-to-day now, and the ones that I know we must face in the future) was caused by the government or free markets or capitalism. To be completely honest, I don't think there is one factor we can completely put the blame on. I believe it is a strong combination of both the government and capitalism. Now throw in the natural element of human greed, and we have a dangerous mix that can easily spiral into a crisis. The award winning film Too Big to Fail focused on a short time period during the economic crisis in 2008, when the global market was falling apart. As the Lehman Brothers, Bank of America, General Electric, and other companies struggle in the midst of trying to arrange solutions to their problems, Wall Street begins to fall apart, and credit flow nearly stops. AIG begins to fail, and the Federal Reserve Bank attempts to remediate the problems fail. The government and Congress are too slow to act, which only accelerates the downwards spiral. Eventually, in the middle of the crisis, bank mergers continue and become so large that they are declared too big to fail. 

However, to this day, it's actually interesting, to think about whether "too big to fail" is good for our economic future or not. The name itself seems pretty dangerous - if they fail, pretty disastrous results could ensue. But at the same time, these larger banks might pose less threat of failure than the smaller, "weaker" banks. Perhaps we shouldn't be thinking about whether "too big" or smaller is better, but rather, how we can implement policies so that different sizes of companies and banks can have equal opportunity and competition.