ABSTRACT
From 2007 to 2009, the global financial system and economy entered an unprecedented severe crisis and the deepest recession since World War II. If losses by financial intermediaries in the 1929 and 1933 crises were estimated to account for 4 percent of the United States gross domestic product (GDP), the overall cost of the 2007–09 crisis far exceeded the previous one, with the banking sector losing $1.7 trillion, equivalent to 11.8 percent of U.S. GDP (White 2008).
