Do you remember the day the 2008 crash happened?

[mwmw]

What were you doing? Did you think it would turn out as horrifically bad as it did?

My husband remembers - he was having a vasectomy 😁

My employer reduced our wages by 25%. The rate has never recovered.

I was working for ulster bank at the time. I remember all the customers talking about it. It’s all we heard for weeks and weeks. All asking questions none of us staff knew the answers too. But I don’t remember any real change in day to day business. There was no ghost town or anything.

Yes and no.

I remember a good few things leading up to it. I remember Barclays couldn’t settle their end of day clearing and the BoE had to step in.

I remember being told on the grapevine that BoS had to go to full board for any lending over £1million

And mostly I remember Private Eye almost constantly warning about sub prime mortgages

This was all 2007

Yes. DD was a newborn so I was able to devour the business pages and watch the news all day. I even understood it all back then.

Was in a hormonal and sleep deprived fog and couldn’t engage when DH fretted about it regularly after work. Was one of the main reasons I continued WoH at the time, which was shit at the time but probably sensible.

I can't remember the specific day, I did have a baby that would cry if his feet pointed the wrong way, I can remember very little from that year, it passed in a big blur.

I don’t think it was a day. It was a sequence of events.

The 2008 GFC wasn't a crash that dramatically affected most people, it was a banking crash that didn't lead to mass unemployment or hyper inflation, its impact was slow burn....

Labour spent all the money preventing a real depression and collapse in retail banking, which def would have screwed us all - they were supported fully in that by the Tories... remember that conservative voters lol!

Don't have a clue what you're on about and I was 2 years into my working life then

I remember 'the recession' but it made absolutely no difference to me, I guess because my job wasn't affected and I lived at home.

We bought a house, then house prices crashed. Had a five year fixed rate mortgage as everyone thought at the time that interest rates were going to go up, instead they crashed as well.

Still have negative equity.

I’m really surprised how many people don’t remeber. Do you think this will be how people respond when asked the same question about brexit in ten years time? Back then the crash seemed like a calamity. That whole time period has really put me off buying a house actually. We had a housing market crash in 2007 and the in 2008 people were worried that there would be a recession and they would loose their jobs and be forced to sell their houses at a loss.

Google tells me it was September 15th. I remember everything being shakey before hand, but the second half of that year was the most hectic of my life (house move, wedding, TTC, pregnancy, etc).

The business I worked in was unaffected and has flourished since. But it was totally unrelated to bank. My dad worked in IT for RBS so I expect his memories are crystal clear!

I was vaguely aware of Lehman's and the talk of "contagion". Then there was the run on Northern Rock and a big US bank got into trouble, (Fannie Mae?).

I had negative equity and really struggled with rising fuel prices, £1.50 a litre at one point. Luckily I kept my job, though decent bonuses and pay rises came to an end.
Things still haven't recovered, decent interest rates on savings seem to be a thing of the past.

I remember it as I was travelling in USA and the exchange rate suddenly halved. I stayed another month after that, then when I got back to the UK it took me 5 months to get a job.

It happened in my last year of uni. I don’t remember the day but I remember being called into a meeting in uni. We were all told to either emigrate or do a post grad. The crash would affect us for years. And it did. I chose to emigrate.

I’ll never forget 2008. When I started my degree in 2005 it was all roses, and in my final year, it just changed. I do remember the day of the lehman bros though, thinking this is bad.

The 2008 GFC wasn't a crash that dramatically affected most people, it was a banking crash that didn't lead to mass unemployment or hyper inflation, its impact was slow burn....

This ^
There was no 'dramatic single event' that registered with most people - maybe if you worked in banking or were studying economics or something - but not a "significant event" like moon landings or an assassination or the Berlin wall coming down.
The economy has always had turns and twists.

Yes, we’d just moved to Canada and had the fear we’d get sent back. Plenty got laid off around us as our project was stalled but somehow we kept our jobs

Nope. There was no specific day. There were lots of things happened over a period of time.

Gosh yes. I was working for a city law firm just around the corner from Lehmanns offices at the time. And Bank of America being bought by $1 by Merril Lynch (or did BoA buy ML?). My work had a massive redundancy the next year and my DH's entire compress forced to work (and be paid for) 4 day weeks instead of 5. We then had about 7 years straight of no pay rises.

The 2008 GFC wasn't a crash that dramatically affected most people, it was a banking crash that didn't lead to mass unemployment or hyper inflation, its impact was slow burn

This

Also anyone predicting the crash was not a mainstream economist, everyone left/right had bought into the neo-liberal ever rising GDO/house prices mantra.

Krugman was ridiculed by the Guardian with the telegraph only hinting at it.

But in our usual typical British way, it's always someone else's fault so we can dump it all on America's door step

I worked for the firm that did the Lehman administration so i certainly noticed it. Being a finance / economist there were other events leading up to it. Deal activity ceased. We had the jaguar landrover administration too. Presumably Fannie Mac came earlier i vaguely remember and i cant remember when the run on Northern Rock happened. It was like a gradual slide that suddenly went to shite and i feel like nothing has ever been as good since. House prices (where i live) continued to rise, equities did Ok afterwards. Its the wage stagnation and tightening of opportunities that ive really noticed.

People now seem to date it to 2008, but I vividly remember food prices rising and rising in 2007 and northern rock being in trouble with queues down the street.

Lehman brothers came a bit later and were just one part of the whole cock up!

Vaguely, it wasn't much compared to the unemployment and other crap in the 1980s or the 16% interest rates and losing 24k to negative equity in 1992

I worked for a bank at the time, and was on maternity leave so I had the time to watch it all unfold. Life has never been quite the same since (I didn’t go back to work in the end, long story).

It was such an odd time, some people’s lives were turned completely upside down and others were largely unaware of much going on, and this was at the time not just looking back.