Bear Stearns: Surviving The Great Recession

In 2008, the economy took an unexpected turn that experts themselves was in disbelief when it happened. The U.S economy was headed in a recession. The first sign was when Bear Stearns put itself up for sale, one of the largest as well as the oldest investment company that survived the Great Depression, but when the mortgage crises started, Bear Stearns was having a hard time (Solomon, 2011). When this happened, experts knew this was a sign of trouble. A few months later, Lehman Brother that was established before the Civil War was leaving the market as well. With these types of companies leaving the market, this caused the government to bail out banks as well as big automakers. This also caused the Dow Jones Industrial average to drop below 10,000 for the first time in years and the Dow continued to drop in the year 2009 to 7,000. Due to all the changes, this also caused unemployment to reach an all record high of 8.5 percent.
While the recession was making large shifts in the economy, this also shifted how consumers were spending his or her money.
Consumers were eating out less, not going on as many family vacations as they did in the past, and many consumers stopped buying bottled water and started back using tap water, consumers starting purchasing more baked goods items, such as flour and sugar, as well as purchasing more freezer bags and jars. The biggest thing that consumers did was started to save their money, which was new to many people that were adults because this was not something that adults would
do.