Great Recession: GDP growth rates for G7 countries from 2007 to 2011

From the onset of the Global Financial Crisis in the Summer of 2007, the world economy experienced an almost unprecedented period of turmoil in which millions of people were made unemployed, businesses declared bankruptcy en masse, and structurally critical financial institutions failed. The crisis was triggered by the collapse of the U.S. housing market and subsequent losses by investment banks such as Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and Merrill Lynch. These institutions, which had become over-leveraged with complex financial securities known as derivatives, were tied to each other through a web of financial contracts, meaning that the collapse of one investment bank could trigger the collapse of several others. As Lehman Brothers failed on September 15. 2008, becoming the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history, shockwaves were felt throughout the global financial system. The sudden stop of flows of credit worldwide caused a financial panic and sent most of the world's largest economies into a deep recession, later known as the Great Recession.

The World Economy in recession

More than any other period in history, the world economy had become highly interconnected and interdependent over the period from the 1970s to 2007. As governments liberalized financial flows, banks and other financial institutions could take money in one country and invest it in another part of the globe. Financial institutions and other non-financial companies became multinational, meaning that they had subsidiaries and partners in many regions. All this meant that when Wall Street, the center of global finance in New York City, was shaken by bankruptcies and credit freezes in late 2007, other advanced economies did not need to wait long to feel the tremors. All of the G7 countries, the seven most economically advanced western-aligned countries, entered recession in 2008, before experiencing an even deeper trough in 2009. While all returned to growth by 2010, this was less stable in the countries of the Eurozone (Germany, France, Italy) over the following years due to the Eurozone crisis, as well as in Japan, which has had issues with low growth since the mid-1990s.