The severe financial crisis of 2008 was driven by a massive collapse in the American housing market along with a stock market nosedive — an economic downturn of subprime mortgage crises and credit crises that resulted in devastating unemployment and the Great Recession.
It was one of the sharpest stock-market drops since the Great Depression, a plunge that was debilitating to investors as stock portfolios lost approximately 50% of their value. While that crash stemmed from the housing market, the next downturn in America’s economic cycle likely will not be a mortgage crisis.
