The document summarizes the global financial crisis that began in 2007. Excessive lending by central banks over many years led to a massive credit bubble and over-inflated housing markets. Cracks began to emerge in 2007 with downgrades of structured financial products and freezing of credit markets. Major events in 2008 like the failures of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers caused widespread panic and frozen credit markets. Government interventions like TARP were required to unfreeze credit and inject capital into banks to avoid a complete financial system collapse. The long term effects of the crisis included massive global deleveraging and economic recovery taking many years.
