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STEVE EMBER: Welcome to THE MAKING OF A NATION -- American history in VOA Special English. I'm Steve Ember. This week, our series brings us to the events of two thousand eight. It was a year that combined one of the nation's worst financial crises with one of its most exciting elections in recent history.

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In two thousand six and two thousand seven, the American housing market began to collapse. Home values had been going up and up. Now the balloon burst.

People started losing homes they had bought with money borrowed on easy credit terms -- loans they were then unable to repay.

The hope was that the crisis in the housing market could be contained, and that it would not spread to the wider economy.

Traditionally, local banks would have suffered the losses on the bad loans. But times had changed. Big investment banks had been buying those loans. The investment banks then resold them as securities offering high returns.

Credit rating agencies working for the investment banks had told investors that the securities were safe. Selling a financial product based on a large group of loans was supposed to limit the risk if a few loans went bad. That was the idea. But that was before millions of homeowners stopped paying their mortgage loans.

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Mortgage-backed securities became known as toxic assets. No one wanted to be anywhere near them.

AP
Bear Stearns was the first major investment bank to fail in the housing crisis

In March of two thousand eight Bear Stearns became the first investment bank to fail as a result of the crisis. Others followed.

In September, Lehman Brothers, the nation's fourth-largest investment bank, sought protection in bankruptcy court. Its failure only deepened the fears in credit markets.

Toward the end of two thousand eight an international credit freeze developed. No one wanted to take the risk of lending money to banks or other companies that might have owned toxic assets. Some people feared that there could even be a global depression, the first since the nineteen thirties.

The United States economy -- the world's largest -- started shrinking at the end of two thousand seven. The unemployment rate started rising.

President George W. Bush's administration, Congress and the central bank, the Federal Reserve, took extraordinary steps to deal with the growing financial crisis. Their efforts included loans to banks, automakers and other companies. The aim was to rescue businesses that officials considered "too big to fail."

The bailouts from Washington were a decision that not all of the American people agreed with. But the people also had to make a decision of their own in two thousand eight. It was a presidential election year, and the candidates were some of the most diverse in the nation's history.

The Republican Party nominated Arizona Senator John McCain. At seventy-two he would have taken office as the nation's oldest first-term president.

JOHN MCCAIN: "So stand up with me, my friends, stand up and fight for America, for her strength, her 本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。