I was there during the crypto-bubble, the housing market bubble, but I don’t have any memory of the internet/dotcom bubble, and I was not alive during the rail-road bubble.
However, I want to know what the thoughts of the people were during that time. During AI, that fact that it’s a bubble is more apparent but during the housing and dotcom, I feel like it was more subtle (or I am too naive).
Does anyone have any personal experience of what it was like at that time? Were people as skeptical as they are today? What were they right/wrong about? Were the attitudes different? What changed after the crash?
The 2008 housing bubble and crash altered the trajectory of my dad’s life completely. He went from having a thriving roofing business that had lasted since the 60’s to having to make sure he eeked every single possible job out of the summer that he could until ten years later when his dementia set in and he couldn’t work anymore (except for DoorDash, with my mom), because many people’s spending power was permanently lowered and still hasn’t recovered. This meant having to take less pay for jobs in some cases.
Other than its effects on my family, all I remember is doubling my retirement contributions, because stock prices were so low I was getting shares for a bargain. I’ve always lived frugally, so crashes don’t hit me as hard as they hit a lot of people.
When things crashed in 2020, I invested heavily in oil stock, having learned that the airline industry suffers tremendously in an economic crash, and with the airline industry being the biggest consumer of fuel, oil stocks can be bought dirt cheap. (I got most of my shares at 90% down from their all time highs in March and April 2020)I sat on those shares for two years and they made me enough money I was able to pay off my student loans and put a sizable down payment on a condo. It wasn’t fuck you money, but it was life changing.
I’m glad dad lived long enough to see what I was able to make of myself. He was proud and happy he was able to contribute to the life I’ve built.
I should add to this a little.
The 2008 crisis and how the government reacted is partly why I live frugally. Watching millions lose their homes and no one go to prison changed my whole outlook on life. I was a massive Obama supporter, and there was no meaningful support for Occupy Wall Street, and in fact, Obama’s admin stood aside while NYPD ganged up and brutalized the protesters. I still hate Obama for bailing out Wall Street while so many lost their homes and livelihoods. All the big bankers who stole our money walked.
Essentially, I no longer have any hope for meaningful change as long as the Democrats and Republicans are in charge. My focus on saving and investing partly comes from a place where I fully expect Social Security to be gone when I hit retirement age, so I’m doing what I can to ensure I’m able to sustain myself.
Not defending the Obama administration here but wasn’t the bailout legislation passed under the Bush Administration?
The 2008 crisis and how the government reacted is partly why I live frugally
I understand this sentiment. As someone who didn’t see wealth during their childhood, people get confused as I still travel by public transport instead of driving. I just assume that things can go sideways at any moment. Yes, it can seem like I’m a bit paranoid, but it’s not illogical.
Thanks for sharing.
Yup.
My parents have been ‘borrowing’ my car for two years. I get around on a Segway e-scooter, which given the explosion in gas prices, has turned out to be a very lucky purchase.
Plan for the worst. Hope for the best. It’s really the best way to navigate America these days.
TARP was enacted October of 2008, the year Obama was elected to office. Obama was not sworn in until 2009. The Dodd frank act in 2009 lowered the amount that TARP could push out.
No.
We’re not giving Obama credit for token gestures here. He had a supermajority and could have enacted meaningful reforms, but he didn’t.
Everyone involved in the subprime mortgage crisis walked and under Obama were still paying bonuses to themselves with taxpayer’s money, all while the foreclosure crisis ravaged the American people.
I do not care that the crisis originated under Bush. I care that Obama knew how bad it was and allowed people to become impoverished further while Wall Street partied with our money.
My reply was only about the bailout, nothing else you mentioned. I agree completely that these asshots shouldn’t have went free, and didn’t lose their fortunes they built off the backs of us.
I’m just not happy that the missinformation about Obama and the bailouts is still going strong this long after
For his faults, Biden accomplished a lot with a very small majority in the Senate and House.
Obama really wasted a huge opportunity to change the country with his huge majorities.
Doesn’t it feel dirty funneling capital to big oil?
It’s a casino and the chips have various evil words and symbols on them. Playing those chips does not change the symbols or words. If you’re the creator of those chips, fuck you, but us proles have to use what’s available.
Chipz knows their chips!
Nope.
I’m not in any position to create change on energy policy, and therefore, it’s kind of dumb to project any sort of guilt for it onto myself.
UK, 2008ish was a pain in the ass for me. Just entering the workforce, got my first job at mcdonalds. Got in just before it all went to shit. Seriously psychologically abusive time. Managers treated you like shit and you had to lick their arses because they could fire you for anything and there were thousands of people lining up for your job. I became a shift manager and I had ex-lawyers and fully trained vets cleaning out the grease traps.
Was fucked.
Basically same situation, but lived at home because there was no jobs. People in snazzy suits were all lined up around the block for a shot at working for a burger chain.
In 1997 everyone knew we were in a bubble. Alan Greenspan the Fed Chair publicly called it “Irrational Exuberance. ” If you got out of the market then you missed a market doubling and left significant upside on the table. It was insanity and everyone new it, much like today. There was a trend of people quitting their jibs to become full time day traders. Its easy to make money in an up market.
In the dot com collapse the effects were mostly felt in the tech sector. While the stock market slumped there was not a wave of banks failing. There were a lot of layoffs in the tech sector and IT jobs were hard to come by.
Yeah I had my dot-com job with tons of stock options and knew I was gonna be rich! Just gotta go public and… oh, what’s that, 3 waves of layoffs leaving a skeleton crew? Well shit. I’ll just go get another job and… well shit. Ok, handful of other geeks, let’s band together and scrape tiny contracts together in a desperate bid to eat and make rent. Guess I’m not rich anymore. :/
The last few bubbles completely wiped out people who had 401k accounts. They were absolutely devastated, but if they stayed in, it rebuilt with interest… just in time to be wiped out when the next bubble pops.
It will happen again. Folks that have money in the stock market right now will be jumping off buildings in the next few years.
That’s why I have a significant chunk of my little personal wealth in fixed deposit. The market is too wacky for the little guys to make any money.
Especially if they never invest it…
40 years (what I would call typical number of wage earning years) is a long time to sit on the sidelines. If one starts investing early, it’s basically impossible to be in the negative by retirement. Nothing even remotely like that ever happened, at least in modern times.
I never understand why people think that the stock market down 20% year over year is a life changing disaster.
“Wiped out” just has no meaning anymore. In the absolute worst case if you bought and sold on the worst days imaginable, you were down around 50% for the last two crashes. That is not “wiped out”.
It is much more likely that the person bought the sock at least a year prior to the crash, in which case they would actually be net positive at the bottom.
Just don’t invest money you need it 5 years and ignore the catastrophizing.
The housing bubble got me because we bought a cheap house, got divorced and then I couldn’t afford to buy a new house. Now I live in an apartment with quadruple the rent of my old mortgage.
MBAs being loud and annoying, everyone frantically trying to cram PRODUCT X everywhere, last second attempts at random legislation that really didn’t do anything then it all went to shit
I remember that MBAs were in hot demand during that time, specially after wasting 4 years in engineering.
Of course they were , they promised unicorn farts and candy for everyone
You know how Gen Z is seen as pushing back a lot more at work and not going above like millennials? Millennials went through the Great Recession and saw the job market go from great to horrible.
Congrats on playing the market well!
Thanks!
At the time it was a huge risk. I had a small bonus from my job I sat on from January to March 2020, but also took a loan from my Roth 401k, but I was fairly certain about my research. The bet I made was that I wouldn’t have a catastrophe in my life in the 2-3 years I knew I’d have to wait for the market to recover in order to make the investment worth it.
If I’d known Donald would declare war on Iran I’d have held it even longer. Oh well.
