Economy
Bear Stearns in March 2008: When a Securities Firm Ran Out of Funding
Bear Stearns was a major securities firm with substantial assets, yet in March 2008 it faced an acute…
Category: Markets
Stock markets, indices, equities and bonds: daily moves, analysis and the forces driving prices.
Economy
Lehman Brothers in 2008: Why Bankruptcy Shocked Markets Beyond One Firm
Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy on September 15, 2008. The event is often treated as the single beginning…
Economy
Why Mortgage Securitization Spread Credit Risk Without Eliminating It
Securitization converts pools of loans into securities purchased by investors. It can provide new funding for mortgages and…
Economy
Black Monday 1987: How a Market Sell-Off Became a System-Wide Liquidity Test
On October 19, 1987, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 22.6 percent in one trading day. The headline…
Markets
Why Stock Exchanges Introduced Circuit Breakers After the 1987 Crash
A circuit breaker is a rule that pauses trading during an extreme market decline. Such pauses became central…
Economy
Before the 1929 Crash: What New York Fed Reports Revealed About Market Credit
Two Federal Reserve reports from early 1929 show why a spike in call-money rates and a change in…
Economy
Why the Fed’s 1929 Discount-Rate Debate Was More Complicated Than a Stock-Market Warning
In the popular retelling of 1929, rising stock prices simply called for higher interest rates. The contemporary policy…