In finance, default is failure to meet the legal obligations of a loan, for example when a home buyer fails to make a mortgage payment, or when a corporation or government fails to pay a bond which has reached maturity. A national or sovereign default is the failure or refusal of a government to repay its national debt.
The 1997 Asian financial crisis was a period of financial crisis that gripped much of East and Southeast Asia during the late 1990s. The crisis began in Thailand in July 1997 before spreading to several other countries with a ripple effect, raising fears of a worldwide economic meltdown due to financial contagion. However, the recovery in 1998–1999 was rapid, and worries of a meltdown quickly subsided.
A bank run or run on the bank occurs when many clients withdraw their money from a bank, because they believe the bank may fail in the near future. In other words, it is when, in a fractional-reserve banking system, numerous customers withdraw cash from deposit accounts with a financial institution at the same time because they believe that the financial institution is, or might become, insolvent. When they transfer funds to another institution, it may be characterized as a capital flight. As a bank run progresses, it may become a self-fulfilling prophecy: as more people withdraw cash, the likelihood of default increases, triggering further withdrawals. This can destabilize the bank to the point where it runs out of cash and thus faces sudden bankruptcy. To combat a bank run, a bank may acquire more cash from other banks or from the central bank, or limit the amount of cash customers may withdraw, either by a imposing a hard limit or by scheduling quick deliveries of cash, encouraging high-return term deposits to reduce on-demand withdrawals or suspending withdrawals altogether.
Lehman Brothers Inc. was an American global financial services firm founded in 1847. Before filing for bankruptcy in 2008, Lehman was the fourth-largest investment bank in the United States, with about 25,000 employees worldwide. It was doing business in investment banking, equity, fixed-income and derivatives sales and trading, research, investment management, private equity, and private banking. Lehman was operational for 158 years from its founding in 1850 until 2008.
The Argentine Great Depression was an economic depression in Argentina, which began in the third quarter of 1998 and lasted until the second quarter of 2002. It followed the fifteen years stagnation and a brief period of free-market reforms.
Household debt is the combined debt of all people in a household, including consumer debt and mortgage loans. A significant rise in the level of this debt coincides historically with many severe economic crises and was a cause of the U.S. and subsequent European economic crises of 2007–2012. Several economists have argued that lowering this debt is essential to economic recovery in the U.S. and selected Eurozone countries.
A bailout is the provision of financial help to a corporation or country which otherwise would be on the brink of bankruptcy.
Economic collapse, also called economic meltdown, is any of a broad range of bad economic conditions, ranging from a severe, prolonged depression with high bankruptcy rates and high unemployment, to a breakdown in normal commerce caused by hyperinflation, or even an economically caused sharp rise in the death rate and perhaps even a decline in population. Often economic collapse is accompanied by social chaos, civil unrest and a breakdown of law and order.
A vulture fund is a hedge fund, private-equity fund or distressed debt fund, that invests in debt considered to be very weak or in default, known as distressed securities. Investors in the fund profit by buying debt at a discounted price on a secondary market and then using numerous methods to subsequently sell the debt for a larger amount than the purchasing price. Debtors include companies, countries, and individuals.
A financial crisis is any of a broad variety of situations in which some financial assets suddenly lose a large part of their nominal value. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, many financial crises were associated with banking panics, and many recessions coincided with these panics. Other situations that are often called financial crises include stock market crashes and the bursting of other financial bubbles, currency crises, and sovereign defaults. Financial crises directly result in a loss of paper wealth but do not necessarily result in significant changes in the real economy.
Under-capitalization refers to any situation where a business cannot acquire the funds they need. An under-capitalized business may be one that cannot afford current operational expenses due to a lack of capital, which can trigger bankruptcy, may be one that is over-exposed to risk, or may be one that is financially sound but does not have the funds required to expand to meet market demand.
The Baring crisis or the Panic of 1890 was an acute recession. Although less serious than other panics of the era, it is the nineteenth century’s most famous sovereign debt crisis, and the 17th largest decline in U.S. stock market history.
The Panic of 1825 was a stock market crash that started in the Bank of England, arising in part out of speculative investments in Latin America, including the imaginary country of Poyais. The crisis was felt most acutely in Britain, where it led to the closure of twelve banks. It was also manifest in the markets of Europe, Latin America and the United States. Nationwide gold and silver confiscation ensued and an infusion of gold reserves from the Banque de France saved the Bank of England from collapse. The panic has been called the first modern economic crisis not attributable to an external event, such as a war, and so the start of modern economic cycles. The Napoleonic Wars had been highly profitable for all sectors of the British financial system, and the expansionist monetary actions taken during transition from war to peace brought a surge of prosperity and speculative ventures. The stock market boom became a bubble and banks caught in the euphoria made risky loans.
In the context of stock markets, the public float or free float represents the portion of shares of a corporation that are in the hands of public investors as opposed to locked-in shares held by promoters, company officers, controlling-interest investors, or governments. This number is sometimes seen as a better way of calculating market capitalization, because it provides a more accurate reflection of what public investors consider the company to be worth. In this context, the float may refer to all the shares outstanding that can be publicly traded.
The bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers on September 15, 2008, was the climax of the subprime mortgage crisis. After the financial services firm was notified of a pending credit downgrade due to its heavy position in subprime mortgages, the Federal Reserve summoned several banks to negotiate financing for its reorganization. These discussions failed, and Lehman filed a Chapter 11 petition that remains the largest bankruptcy filing in U.S. history, involving more than US$600 billion in assets.
A bad bank is a corporate structure which isolates illiquid and high risk assets held by a bank or a financial organisation, or perhaps a group of banks or financial organisations. A bank may accumulate a large portfolio of debts or other financial instruments which unexpectedly become at risk of partial or full default. A large volume of non-performing assets usually make it difficult for the bank to raise capital, for example through sales of bonds. In these circumstances, the bank may wish to segregate its good assets from its bad assets through the creation of a bad bank. The goal of the segregation is to allow investors to assess the bank's financial health with greater certainty. A bad bank might be established by one bank or financial institution as part of a strategy to deal with a difficult financial situation, or by a government or some other official institution as part of an official response to financial problems across a number of institutions in the financial sector.
The European debt crisis, often also referred to as the eurozone crisis or the European sovereign debt crisis, is a multi-year debt crisis that took place in the European Union (EU) from 2009 until the mid to late 2010s. Several eurozone member states were unable to repay or refinance their government debt or to bail out over-indebted banks under their national supervision without the assistance of third parties like other eurozone countries, the European Central Bank (ECB), or the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
In the United States, the Great Recession was a severe financial crisis combined with a deep recession. While the recession officially lasted from December 2007 to June 2009, it took many years for the economy to recover to pre-crisis levels of employment and output. This slow recovery was due in part to households and financial institutions paying off debts accumulated in the years preceding the crisis along with restrained government spending following initial stimulus efforts. It followed the bursting of the housing bubble, the housing market correction and subprime mortgage crisis.
The 2007–2008 financial crisis, or Global Financial Crisis (GFC), was a severe worldwide economic crisis that occurred in the early 21st century. It was the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression (1929). Predatory lending targeting low-income homebuyers, excessive risk-taking by global financial institutions, and the bursting of the United States housing bubble culminated in a "perfect storm".
Debt crisis is a situation in which a government loses the ability of paying back its governmental debt. When the expenditures of a government are more than its tax revenues for a prolonged period, the government may enter into a debt crisis. Various forms of governments finance their expenditures primarily by raising money through taxation. When tax revenues are insufficient, the government can make up the difference by issuing debt.
