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Economics
Money, markets, trade and crises: the machinery that decides who has what, and why.
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· Economics · 18 min
Why did the global financial system nearly collapse in 2008?
An American housing boom was wired into the world's banks through mortgage-backed securities, extreme borrowing and fragile short-term funding. When house prices fell, trust evaporated — and for a few weeks in September 2008, the machinery that moves money around the world genuinely began to stop.