one year later

Of all the effects of 2008's economic meltdown, the most significant might be the growing belief that the country is now on the road to socialism. Within days of the government's 2008 bailout of Sallie Mae (SLM) and Freddie Mac (FRE), the media began to resound with complaints about the country's...

Lehman Brothers' bankruptcy filing on Sept. 15, 2008 set off a nuclear winter that's still chilling the bones of global finance and commerce a year later. Of course, Lehman's monumental collapse was just one in a series major financial and economic blows, and while the world may not have ended, it...

Toddlers learn to steer clear of a hot stove after they get burned once, maybe twice. Investors, however, can be a little slower on the uptake. This time last year, banks that were long thought to be "too big to fail" collapsed, investments that were considered safe imploded and retirement...

The American International Group (AIG) of today has no value to its long-term shareholders, according to Maurice R. "Hank" Greenberg, the insurer's former longtime chairman and chief executive. After all, the government owns nearly 80 percent of it. "Who's going to invest in a company that is 80...

The massive downturn of the last year have been a great leveler, demonstrating that, regardless of one's position or address, the effects of an economic crisis spread across all sectors of society. As the miseries of Madoff-victim Kevin Bacon and mortgage sufferer Ed McMahon show, while fame and...

Amid all the Financial Crisis anniversary coverage, many of us will be trying to recall what we were doing this time last year on the week the world broke. I remember exactly what I was doing. I was talking my wife into booking a vacation to California. When we'd first come up with the idea, the...

How would an optimist view the financial world, one year after the start of the global financial crisis? Well, to start with one would point to the everyday, hum-drum reality of commerce: day-to-day commercial transactions are taking place and business as we know it in the United States is still...