The great cracks in US history
Creative finance has caused the fall of former telecommunications and energy giants, which have transformed into investment banks specializing in risky derivatives. The subprime mortgage crisis hit the global financial sector, leading to the largest crisis in history and the Madoff scandal. Currently, the increase in interest rates and cryptocurrencies it knocked out Silicon Valley Bank, which specializes in financing tech start-ups and Californian wines, and Signature Bank, active in the field of digital currencies.
The fear of a new financial crisis is gripping America, already hit hard by the pandemic. But that of Svb was not the only case that shook the world. In 2001, the American energy giant Enron had to declare bankruptcy. Its downfall was marked by a series of unprecedented corporate scandals, with managers receiving millions of dollars knowing they were falsifying accounts. WorldCom was the queen of telecommunications. At its peak, it controlled 50% of US internet traffic and 50% of global email. He filed for bankruptcy in 2002 after it was discovered that the CEO had been inflating the accounts to hide slowing revenue growth.
The best-known scandal is that of Lehman Brother, which went bankrupt on 15 September 2008, which triggered the well-known recession and pushed central banks, in particular the Fed and the ECB, to adopt unprecedented measures. Washington Mutual, another bank at the center of the crisis, was shut down by US authorities in 2008 with $307 billion in assets and $188 billion in deposits. Finally, General Motors, which filed for bankruptcy in 2009. It is the third largest bankruptcy in American history after Lehman Brothers and Worldcom.