Talk:Late 1980s recession

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Dropped this paragraph:

The recession was triggered by the collapse of American Savings and Loan corporations. The massive financial companies had been losing money for many years and were thus allowed by the Reagan administration to move into more profitable, but also more high risk ventures. At the same time staff and funding for the SEC and other monitoring organization was cut dramatically.

For the following reasons:
-Most S&L's were not corporations. They were unincorporated associations owned by either their depositors or a bank holding company.
-The S&L's were making money until the 1986 tax reform act changed the write-down rules for investments, particularly "passive" real estate ventures, which made the forms of these ventures no longer profitable and caused them to default on their loans.
-Deregulation began under the Carter administration: in 1980 the deposit insurance limits were raised by 150%.
-The SEC has nothing whatsoever to do with "monitoring" the banking industry: that was done by the F.S.L.I.C. for federally insured institutions, and by state authorities for state-charterered institutions. Ellsworth 21:52, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

Rewrote this sentence:

However the lumbering savings and loans were beginning to collapse, a number of them having to declare bankruptcy, putting the savings and pensions of millions of Americans in jeopardy.

-S&L's, like other deposit institutions, cannot declare bankruptcy. Insolvent banking entities are liquidated by federal and/or state regulators.
-S&L's had very little impact on pension fund assets, most of which were invested in stock and real estate.
Ellsworth 15:32, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Rewrote this sentence:

[the recession] began in the United States and spread around the world.

There was no recession in the US 1987. GDP continued to grow until the third quarter of 1990. Ellsworth 23:29, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Ellsworth. This whole article is misleading. The stock market crashed in 1987. However, it did not trigger a US recession (see definition of recession: at least two quarters of economic contraction). The recession started in 1990. It was the "early 1990s recession", not the "late 1980s recession." Cbmccarthy (talk) 19:15, 21 January 2008 (UTC)