TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Lessons from 2008-2009 global recession
The overall damage to the global economy was estimated at US$4.5 trillion at 2009 prices, or around 8 percent of the world output that year.
Change Size
People walk by the Goldman Sach's New York headquarters on July 18, 2017 in New York City. (Agence France -Presse/Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
I
t was a global recession unseen since the 1930s: The United States economy was hit by a financial earthquake in 2008, and the impact was felt around the globe. Ten years on, Indonesia is still grappling with the legacy of this crisis, with the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) still investigating the case of the Bank Century bailout, the only Indonesian bank that went bankrupt as a result of the crisis.
Many Indonesian professionals also lost millions of dollars they had invested in American banks that they could not recover. During the 2007-2009 crisis in the US, real gross domestic product (GDP) fell at a frightening speed. In the third quarter of 2008, GDP fell by 3.7 percent. Then it dropped by a frightening 8.9 percent in Q4 and then by 5.3 percent in Q1 2009.
The overall damage to the global economy was estimated at US$4.5 trillion at 2009 prices, or around 8 percent of the world output that year.
Put another way, it was as if the world economy had shut down completely for a month — no factories, no supermarkets, no electricity, no restaurants and no new cars.
