The Great Recession Turns One: Five Seminal Moments

Happy Anniversary Great Recession. A year ago today Lehman Bros. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and sent the economy into a tailspin the country is still struggling to cope with, and which will likely be the defining challenge of Obama’s first term despite the recent focus on health care. For those of us who before this past year paid little attention to the business world it’s been an education to say the least. For those who toil in the business world and cover it, it has often resulted in the sort of national exposure normally reserved for actors and sports figures (both notorious and celebrated!). With all that in mind, here’s a look at the top ten highlights from the Great Recession: Year One.

1. September 2008 – Lehman Bros. files for bankruptcy, amidst a flurry of frightening headlines, and the NYT.com begins its months-long habit of instilling fear in our hearts with homepage images of plummeting graphs. The blogosphere, which was on the story before the MSM, proves itself the more adept medium to handle the breakneck pace of the fallout.

SLIDESHOW: New York City newspaper front pages from Sept 15, 2008.

2. So much has happened in the interim that sometimes it’s sort of amazing to recall now that the economy tanked amidst the most historic election of our times, and that George Bush was our President when it happened. You may recall just a week after Lehman filed for bankruptcy, Senator John McCain suspended his campaign and dropped everything, including a Letterman appearance, to rush back to D.C. in order to fix things! By way of Katie Couric’s set. This did not sit well with David Letterman who tore him to pieces on his show that night, inflicting early, and arguably severe, damage on a campaign that had yet to suffer the full effects of the Sarah Palin fiasco.

NEXT: Bernie Madoff, Jim Cramer, and Matt Taibbi

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