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- The history of the United States from 2008 to the present began with the collapse of the housing bubble, which led to the Great Recession. The resulting economic downturn and general discontent led Barack Obama to win the presidential election in 2008, becoming the country's first African-American president.
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August 8 – 24 – The United States compete at the Summer Olympics in Beijing, China and win 36 gold, 39 silver, and 37 bronze medals. Michael Phelps wins his eighth gold medal, breaking the record set by Mark Spitz, and sets the record for the most golds in a single Olympics.
Historical events from year 2008. Learn about 305 famous, scandalous and important events that happened in 2008 or search by date or keyword.
On November 4, 2008, after a campaign that lasted nearly two years, Americans elected Illinois senator Barack Obama their 44th president. The result was historic, as Obama, a first-term U.S. senator, became, when he was inaugurated on January 20, 2009, the country’s first African American president.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
The 2008 United States presidential election was the 56th quadrennial presidential election, held on November 4, 2008. The Democratic ticket of Barack Obama, the junior senator from Illinois, and Joe Biden, the senior senator from Delaware, defeated the Republican ticket of John McCain, the senior senator from Arizona, and Sarah Palin, the ...
- The American Dream Was Sold on Too-Easy Credit
- Mortgages Were Transformed Into Ever-Riskier Investments
- Post-Depression Bank Regulations Were Slowly Chipped Away
- Investment Banks Jumped Neck-Deep Into Risk
- The Bush Administration, Criticized For Earlier Bailouts, Cut Lehman Loose
The 2008 financial crisis had its origins in the housing market, for generations the symbolic cornerstone of American prosperity. Federal policy conspicuously supported the American dream of homeownership since at least the 1930s, when the U.S. government began to back the mortgage market. It went further after WWII, offering veterans cheap home lo...
The salesmen could make these deals without investigating a borrower's fitness or a property's value because the lenders they represented had no intention of keeping the loans. Lenders would sell these mortgages onward; bankers would bundle them into securities and peddle them to institutional investors eager for the returns the American housing ma...
To prevent the Great Depression from ever happening again, the U.S. government subjected banks to stringent regulation. Franklin Roosevelt had campaigned on this issue as part of his New Dealin 1932, telling voters his administration would closely regulate securities trading: "Investment banking is a legitimate concern. Commercial banking is anothe...
These nimbler firms, crowded by bigger brethren out of deals they might once have made, now had to seek riskier and more complicated ways to make money. Congress gave them one way to do so in 2000, with the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, deregulating over-the-counter derivatives—securities that were essentially bets that two parties could pri...
In March 2008, the investment bank Bear Stearns began to go under, so the U.S. treasury and the Federal Reserve system brokered, and partly financed, a deal for its acquisition by JPMorgan Chase. In September, the treasury announced it would rescue the government-supervised mortgage underwriters almost universally known as Fannie Mae and Freddie Ma...
- Eric Rauchway
- 3 min
Here are 10 headlines from 2008 that will go down in history -- and a couple that you might have missed. From Asia to Europe, North America to Africa, and even the land down under, the world was humming with activity. And we haven't just recapped the highlights for you.
The 56th quadrennial United States presidential election was held on November 4, 2008. Outgoing Republican President George W. Bush's policies and actions and the American public's desire for change were key issues throughout the campaign.
