Interview with Gary Cutler, witness of the financial crisis of 2007-2008

1. Me: What revolution did you encounter?

Gary: The financial crisis of 20072008, also known as the global financial
crisis and 2008 financial crisis
2. Me: What type of revolution were you involved in?
Gary: Economical
3. Me: What happened during this revolution?
Gary: People began losing their jobs, people were unable to pay their home
mortgages, which led to losing their homes to the banks, and people in general
stopped optional spending (luxury items).
4. Me: When did this take place and how long did it last for?
Gary: It went on from 2007-2008, although the effects lasted for many years
following, up until about 2013.
5. Me: Where did this take place?
Gary: Throughout the United States
6. Me: How did this affect you and your family?
Gary: On our personal side, we did cut back from spending in different areas,
including differing new car purchase and cutting back on cleaning lady hours. On
our business side, we took advantage of the slow market to purchase new vessels
at lower prices due to low demand and low interest rates.
7. Me: How did the revolution affect society as a whole?
Gary: Many people lost their jobs, downsized their houses, sold their homes and
moved into apartments.
8. Me: What caused this revolution?

Gary: The home mortgage bubble burst, which was when banks and home
mortgage loaners were making it so easy for people to borrow larger and larger
sums to buy houses, cars, etc. without insuring they had the ability to pay for
those loans. Banks and mortgage loaners did this out of greed.
9. Me: What ended this revolution?
Gary: The U.S. implemented multiple plans to break the United States out of the
financial downward spiral. Initially, the U.S. Central Bank or the Federal Reserve
Bank began applying a series of interest rate reductions. They did this to make it
cheaper to finance purchases, in affect, lowering the cost to purchase goods. After
many interest rate reductions, interest rates were near zero. With the economy still
not responding and unable to lower interest rates further, the Federal Reserve
implemented Quantitative Easing, commonly referred to as QE1 and QE2. This
involved very large purchases of assets from banks by the Fed. This put large
amounts of cash into the banks to be available to lend. Finally, with almost zero
rate interest and QE1 and QE2, the economy found a bottom to the Recession and
began increasing production and producing jobs.

10. Me: Is it possible for this revolution to occur again today? How/Why?
Gary: Yes, because as much as I am against government regulation, unless we
monitor the lending practices of our banks and mortgage institutions to avoid
lending to unqualified borrowers, while at the same time carefully monitoring
financial conditions and adjusting monetary policy accordingly, we will end up
with another bubble burst and the economical crisis that follows.