[...]... of the economy Employees lose their j obs because the commodities they produce go unsold But without a job or income , they too will lack the money they need to purchase the goods they badly need And then yet more employees will lose their jobs The number of unemployed climbs by millions as the economy produces less and less, and employs fewer and fewer workers and professionals All the while, the. .. Only by an ever-rising amount of credit could people keep up their usual standard of living The continuous rise in credit changed the structure of finance and made it very fragile These changes and their effect on the business cycle are spelled out in Chapter 8 Thus, the focus of this book is the business cycle and its ups and downs that look like a roller coaster But the roller coaster cannot be... goods The capitalists hire other people These employees own nothing productive but their power to labor The capitalists own the product of the employees' labor The capitalists sell the product in the marketplace for money The capitalists will produce only so long as they expect to make a profit in the market above and beyond all their expenses The capitalist system is what creates the possibility of a roller. .. amazing flood of dangerous-looking loans-usually signs of a recession turning into a depression The contraction from 2007 to 2009 is called the Great Recession for obvious 22 H ISTORY OF THE R OLLER C OASTER reasons By 2009 , it was already the longest and most severe contraction since the Great Depression of the 1 930s The financial crisis, the housing bust, and a downturn in the global economy combined... cycles These five cycles begin with the expansion of 1 970 and continue through the recession of 200 1 The book shows how people have fared over that period The book then turns to the Bush expansion of 200 1 to 2007 and the Great Recession that followed it, including the crisis of 2008 21 P ROBLEMS OF THE R OLLER C OASTER E CONOMY The Expansion, 2001 to 2007 S ome features of the expansion of the B... a financial crisis in the middle of the Great Recession This crisis has been building for decades as the whole economic structure slowly changed So the most accurate description of the 2007 to 2009 situ­ ation would be a Great Recession with a Financial Crisis That is too big a mouthful, so the book will use the term "Great Recession" for the period 2007 to 2009 The expansion that preceded the Great. .. into existence which, taken together, allow the economy to go up and down like a roller coaster One condition is the use of the market as the main determinant of what is produced and what is not Second , the existence of money means that goods and services may be produced for the present, but the money may be put away and not spent in the near future Use of credit makes the economy even more vulnerable... houses stand empty, when so many go without? These same topsy-turvy contradictions appear in the global economy Economies across the globe-not just the U.S economy, but also the European, Japanese, and even the red-hot Chinese and Indian economies-are cutting back production European finance employees, Japanese electronics employ­ ees, Chinese garment workers, and Indian software employees are losing their... workers in their home all depended on the sale of the product of their labor to obtain an income Whether products were sold depended on the purchasing decisions of millions of people The buyers of products included fellow workers, factory owners, the land-owning 15 P ROBLEMS OF THE R OLLER C OASTER E CONOMY aristocracy, shopkeepers, and professionals The mass of these purchasing decisions made up the total,... widespread belief that employees themselves, not the economic sys­ tem, should shoulder the blame for the Great Depression reduced sympathy for the unemployed This belief only reinforced the corroding effect that unemployment had on the sense of self-worth of the millions who lost their j obs in the Great Depression In Hard Times ( 1 970) , a riveting oral history of the Great Depression, Studs Terkel .            Preface and Acknowledgments     .       Boom, Bust, and Misery   