Economic downturn of 2008

The Great Recession was a period of general economic decline observed in world markets during the late 2000s and early 2010s. The scale and timing of the recession varied from country to country. In terms of overall impact, the International Monetary Fund concluded that it was the worst global recession since the 1930s. According to the US National Bureau of Economic Research (the official arbiter of US recessions) the recession, as experienced in that country, began in December 2007 and ended in June 2009, thus extending over 19 months. The Great Recession was related to the financial crisis of 2007–08 and U.S. subprime mortgage crisis of 2007–09. The Great Recession has resulted in the scarcity of valuable assets in the market economy and the collapse of the financial sector in the world economy.

Two senses of the word "recession" exist: a less precise sense, referring broadly to "a period of reduced economic activity"; and the academic sense used most often in economics, which is defined operationally, referring specifically to the contraction phase of a business cycle, with two or more consecutive quarters of GDP contraction. Under the academic definition, the recession ended in the United States in June or July 2009. In the broader, lay sense of the word however, many people use the term to refer to ongoing hardship (in the same way that the term "Great Depression" is also popularly used).

The Great Recession met the IMF criteria for being a global recession, requiring a decline in annual real world GDP per‑capita (Purchasing Power weighted), only in the single calendar year 2009. Despite the fact that quarterly data are being used as recession definition criteria by all G20 members, representing 85% of the world GDP, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has decided—in the absence of a complete data set—not to declare/measure global recessions according to quarterly GDP data. The seasonally adjusted PPP‑weighted real GDP for the G20‑zone, however, is a good indicator for the world GDP, and it was measured to have suffered a direct quarter on quarter decline during the three quarters from Q3‑2008 until Q1‑2009, which more accurately mark when the recession took place at the global level.

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