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?

Yes I remember, it was horrible, my DH got made redundant, we thought he could get another job in 6 months or so but unfortunately couldn't and we struggled pretty badly for two years until the economy in his line of work picked up and he managed to gain employment again.

Yes I remember the people coming out of Lehmans with their belongings in boxes. Also, locally, I remember seeing a long queue of people outside Northern Rock - queuing to take their money out. A 'run on the bank' as it used to be called.

Genuinely can't believe some people didn't know what this post was about! (Not being mean - I'm jut genuinely shocked). It will be imprinted in my brain forever, as the company I work for very nearly went bust and things have never been the same since.
Loads of share prices went through the floor, loads of people with pensions and investments lost a lot of money. Their were runs on banks with people queuing round the block to get their money out.

It was the start of austerity, loads of companies went under, loads of public sector cuts... how did you not notice?!

Yes I worked for Lloyds Bank at the time in the department that lent money to other financial institutions so it was crazy busy!
We also had TV crews outside the building whilst the merger with HBOS was going on. I remember one colleague made it on the news doing a very slow walk out the building behind the reporter.

Yes, remember it vividly but I am a financial services lawyer. I was on secondment at a bank at that time. It went from super busy to dead in a matter of days. When I was back at my firm, there were senior partners literally running (and I mean running) around the building at all hours. RBS was almost a total national disaster - the country was hours away from no payroll working, no cash machines working. It was extremely frightening for about 2-3 weeks and then it was just the new (pretty shitty) normal. I learnt a lot in a very short space of time working on a number of the big disasters and takeovers.

My husband's firm asked everyone to take voluntary unpaid leave so that they didn't have to fire people and they were days away from not being able to make payroll.

We were extraordinarily lucky in that we had just bought a flat on a tracker mortgage - was 5.25% when we bought - within a year it had gone down to 0.25% - although definitely had a big impact in other ways on employers/prospects.

Where I lived, you used to get about 400 per month per child (on top of wages). That was slashed back to 140 per month. People were losing jobs, massive mortgages, negative equity, houses left vacant as the builders couldn't afford to finish them. Homes repossessed. Suicide skyrocketed. It was pretty horrendous. It's only picking up in the last 2 years. Now we have Brexit so we'll see how cushioned they are from that.

I was in Sydney working in banking operations. Had friends and ex colleagues coming back from London describing the City as the land of milk and honey for jobs. I had previously done 2 years in the city in the late 90s so could gauge their experiences against mine, and it sounded like a great thing to go over.

Arrived in September 2008 with high expectations. I remember sitting on an open top tourist bus sightseeing London when an agent called about a job. I asked the pay rate, was way below my expectations so told her I wasn't interested. 2 days later Lehmans went under. Finding a job became difficult.

Fortunately I had some savings, and my partner easily found work in her industry. 4 months later I did find a job, working at RBS. Even though the company was in the shitter my area of operations was booming, as it's a safe haven in times of turmoil, so they needed more staff. Worked there until end of 2009.

Found a permanent job at another city firm and have been there since. No pay rises since I joined in 2010. Rumours are there might be some this year, first time in 10 years.

Yes, same month as I graduated from uni! Put a bit of a dampener on things tbh.

I remember 2008 quite vividly, though wasn't affected by it directly (public sector, small mortgage with a building society that was still a mutual). Though in a sense we're all affected by it - real earnings (in terms of spending power in the shops, cost of your weekly grocery shop relative to earnings, etc.) still have not recovered to pre-2008 levels.

Although it was shit for Britain, it didn't hit us nearly as hard as the aftermath in the southern European countries. I caught an old episode of Grand Designs the other day, where the would-be-grand-designer was an Irish actor trying to do up a castle, and the bank pulled his funding half way through the project. They showed Kevin McLeod interviewing a quantity surveyor outside a row of partially completed new builds and the dialogue went like this:
QS: "There are now 3600 estates of houses partially completed but the funding's been pulled."
KM: "What, 3600 houses?"
QS: "No, 3600 estates ..."
Cue jaw dropped expression from KM

I was hit harder by the collapse of the "East Asian Tiger Economies" in the late 90s - lost my job due to that one (funding to universities from foreign fees from students from the far East dried up overnight). And my parents came damn close to losing their house in the collapse in 1992, when interest rates went up to 15% (fortunately I'd just started my first job and could lend them some money - which I felt was only fair given how much financial support they'd given me through university).

Sorry that should say southern European countries and Ireland.

Flabbergasted that anyone who was an adult in 2007/2008 knows nothing about it Do you never watch the news??? What did you think the last decade of economic policy was about? Historically low interest rates etc?

Am actually astounded.

Even those in menial jobs must have sensed the worsening of the economy. If not then they must have had a pretty depressing existence prior.

but it’s not like there was a full on recession or something

GregoryPeckingDuck are you being funny or just being a bit thick?

Because in 2008 the UK certainly did fall into "a full on recession or something"

For 5 quarters (2008 Q2 to 2009 Q2) the UK was in a recession. "The Great Recession" actually.

There was much talk of a double dip recession, but that never actually happened although we did have several single quarters of negative growth during 2010-2012

Arguably we would have been better off if the govt hadn't propped up house prices and if we had had a much sharper shock and got it out of the way. However home owners = voters so we fucked over those with savings rather than debt.

I love this sketch from an Irish comedian about the boom and bust

Exactly, malmom. All the people I know irl who were affected were those with manual jobs or jobs with overtime (as well as financial services, of course). Public sector wasn't affected for a while.

Flabbergasted that anyone who was an adult in 2007/2008 knows nothing about it shock Do you never watch the news??? What did you think the last decade of economic policy was about? Historically low interest rates etc?

@Danglingmod I know right... and these people get to vote and everything.

I think if you've lived through all the peaks and troughs they all sort of merge in together. 2008 was no worse than 1992 or the 70's when we were all bloody poor.

I need to stop reading this thread, PalmTree . Depressing isn't the word.

I'm also surprised some don't renember, were you not reading the news, keeping up with cultural, social events etc? Or maybe if you lived outside the west I can see it passing you by. Many people I suppose could have been sheltered from its impact but to not know about it is quite unusal. Oh the fun you missed

Excuse my spelling I'm all of a kerfufal.

We’d be waiting for it to happen. Not because we are super clever, DH’s work brought him into contact to expats with the top jobs and so he was aware of little things here and there that wouldn’t necessarily make the news. Also, I’d read something a few years before about credit card use in the USA. One family they featured had been using their CC to make mortgage payments. Being the cynic that I am I assumed it wasn’t just one family that could afford their home.

Obviously I didn’t know exactly when it would happen, and the scale of it was a shock. We weren’t effected for another couple of years, just because of where we were. When the ripples did hit our adopted country we had to return here to the UK.

Lois my ILs didn’t know, but they live in a bubble and think that people who read newspapers are odd.

Dh is in the construction industry, I remember in 2006 discussing how these large mortgages 5x peoples salary would be a disaster but we had no idea how bad it would be. We were saved by our relatively small mortgage at the time.

Even those in menial jobs must have sensed the worsening of the economy. If not then they must have had a pretty depressing existence prior.

I was aware of it of course, because it was all over the news. But I can't say I noticed it having any actual effect on me or my family personally. We are teachers, so jobs weren't affected.

Yes Adora - although the precise timing of a crash is uncertain, the warning signs are generally there.

Interestingly, in addition to Brexit, at the moment we have (in no particular order):

Italy in recession (two quarters of negative growth);

Germany recording a quarter of negative growth (and their car industry is in trouble due to excessive reliance on diesel, the emissions scandal, etc. - also parts of their banking industry, particularly Deutsche bank, are in trouble);

The Gilets Jaune in France and the underlying causes (fuel taxes and the economic problems which led Macron to impose them in the first place - and those underlying problems aren't going to go away just because the GJ have got their own way on the taxes);

Trump starting trade wars left right and centre;
China not looking nearly as strong as it did (plus a lurch away from the "centrally controlled capitalism lite" of recent years and back towards a more Maoist type economics);

Impacts of climate change - sub Saharan Africa and Australia in particular are struggling (the impact of this southern-hemisphere summer on Australian agriculture has been absolutely devastating);

And a walk down your average British high street counting the number of vacant shops (plus the numbers of big chains which have gone under, and the fact that not even the online sector is imune - ASOS have announced big reductions in profits in the last quarter).

We are headed for a global recession in the next 6 to 18 months, I think. I also think it's going to be a spectacularly bad one - in fact global depression, late 20s/early 30s style might be a more accurate prediction.