Author: Myah Dombroski

The 2008 Crisis, also known as the 2008 Housing Crisis, was an event that not only hurt the United States economy, but the other countries connected as well. This resulted in a Global Financial Crisis, causing the rich to get richer, and the poor to get poorer. The crisis was caused by carelessness practices in the US Government and on Wall Street, and were all preventable. We learned about the events leading to the 2008 Crisis through Inside Job, the documentary going into detail of what happened in the decades leading to and proceeding the bubble popping through interviews with US Government officials of the time, and many people from who caused the crisis all together through their actions. We also learned about events before and after the crisis in the book The Big Short, which did the same thing as Inside Job but went more in depth about how many people on Wall Street had no clue what they had been doing by creating all these agreements to loan money despite having no way to return the money. Wall Street had known this was a terrible idea for these people but had no idea the long term effects and financial consequences. We see these consequences in both the novel The Turner House and the short documentary, The Old Man and the Storm. Both the novel and documentary follows families who each have families being affected by the crisis, and not being affected at all. In The Old Man and the Storm, an old man of New Orleans, was impacted by Hurricane Katrina. He wants to save his family’s home and community by staying even though everyone else moved away, to rebuild. Only problem was that the bubble had only burst a year prior. This now left Herbert Gettridge, at almost eighty-five years old, to work to be able to afford his build, and building alone to try and make his home liveable with no power and no one else really rebuilding their homes. Everyone else just kind of gave up after the money the government promised never came. The novel The Turner House follows a large family, just like Mr. Gettridge had, and in the wake of the 2008 crisis, they must decide whether or not to sell their childhood home when their mom falls too sick and weak to take care of herself anymore. Also like Mr. Gettridge, their family ranges from really being affected by the crisis to not really making a difference to some. These sources gave us knowledge we did not have prior to the class as we were so young when the crisis began and many followed themes that the crisis followed as well. 

The last novel we read really helped understand how a financial crisis can impact the world. In Parable of the Sower, written by Octavia Butler, the novel follows a young girl in the years 2024 through 2027 who lives in a time where many people are struggling financially and most are homeless. Financial ruin causes people to turn to violence and stealing to be able to provide food and money for themselves and family. This causes many families to move to villages with walls around them to keep the violence, drugs, and animals out.  Things like food, water, amd money are hard to come by, so Laurens father keeps a job at a college and keeps his neighborhood safe in his free time. In the neighborhood, it begins with small things going missing, but all hell breaks loose after a bullet from beyond the wall hits a child through the gate. Shortly after, Laurens father disappears and people from beyond the wall who use a drug to make setting fire feel good, destroys their homes and kills many of the people from the cul de sac, including the rest of Laurens family. She flees with two other survivors heading north, for Canada, to escape the mess of America. Along the way she and her group meet many other people, including Bankhole, her older boyfriend, who is heading for his sister’s farmland in California. Lauren reluctantly agrees to join and they find the house torched, but she decides it’s the perfect place to start a new society with her new family. This novel is like many of the other resources we’ve used to learn about the 2008 Financial Crisis. For example, this story had many characters, especially after they left Robledo. After leaving we met many people also seeking refuge from the situation in the US. We also saw many characters in The Big Short, Inside Job and in The Turner House. We also see the characters facing a crisis, like Mr.Gettridge in The Old Man and the Storm, where his world is in shambles, and he cannot afford to or find a way to fix and rebuild their neighborhood. We also see many being expelled, expulsion is a theme throughout every text and documentary we’ve used this semester, from King Lear  to A Mercy. Many of the themes from sources used this semester have helped us understand the 2008 crisis better. 

There are many themes in both Parable of the Sower that many faced in the 2008 crisis. One example is that the world in the novel had many of the same problems, such as high prices on gas, bread, and water. In the beginning of the novel, Lauren talks about the prices of groceries being so high, they make bread from acorns and they catch rain water to recycle instead of buying clean water. I know from both The Turner House and from talking with my parents after watching Inside Job that the prices on foods and other goods went up, this included a spike in gas prices as my dad had told me, and housing, that Lelah from The Turner House taught me. She just jumped from place to place to have somewhere to stay as she could not actually afford to live there with no job and a gambling addiction. Which also brings me to my next point, that in Parable of the Sower and The Turner House, there were themes of addiction. In Parable of the Sower, it was to drugs that would cause violence, such as the one that makes fire better than sex, or the one Laurens mother used while she was pregnant that gave Lauren too much empathy, causing her to physically feel other peoples pain. Another example of addiction and gamling was seen in Inside Job, The Big Short, and throughout the crisis in 2008. Many of the men on Wall Street used drugs, such as cocaine, and then gambled with people’s money and homes, mostly causing the people with less, to really end up with less. Like in The Turner House, many ended up homeless. Homelessness and expulsion from one’s home is another connection between all the sources from this class. In Parable of the Sower, the poor are forced onto the streets and turn to violence to be able to get goods. In 2008, many people were homeless and forced to either live in a car, like Lelah in The Turner House, or forced into tent camps as we saw in The Old Man and the Storm. Expulsion was a theme seen repeatedly throughout all of our resources, and throughout the crisis. This theme ranges from novels like Parable of the Sower, written in 1994, way before the bubble burst in the crisis, but this theme is seen over and over throughout history, it was also a theme in King Lear written in around 1605, according to the Royal Shakespeare Company website. Expulsion was a theme easily predicted to happen once again, as it happened forever. In this course, we learned not only about what happened in 2008 and how it was preventable and just a result of negligence, but also the themes such as expulsion and bubbling. And we see these things happening in 1605, all the way until now, possibly facing another financial crisis caused by the pandemic. The concept of GLOBE’s statement that students are gaining practice to “reflect upon changes in learning and outlook over time”, can be seen through the course. We learned about expulsion in King Lear and how it affected them in a pre-christan british society, we learned how expulsion affected Florens in A Mercy in the 17th century when she was given up by her mother as part of a trade. We see how this theme stays present throughout the course and how it has affected each time period, even with Parable of the Sower being set in the future. We can use our sources of information to learn from the 2008 crisis, and try to prevent that from happening, by using GLOBE’s goal of reflection to learn from past mistakes for a better future. 

This class has taught me so much about not only the 2008 housing crisis and the key concepts and themes seen throughout, but about collaboration and the importance of slowing down and dissecting. Maybe if the people of Wall Street took this course, they would have slowed down to understand that their actions had serious consequences. If they would have cared or not since it benefited them, is another topic, but they truly had no clue what they were doing, but they not only gambled with the economy but the wealth of the people, which caused distrust in the government, banks, loans, and Wall Street in general.

The 2008 Crisis, also known as the 2008 Housing Crisis, was an event that not only hurt the United States economy, but the other countries connected as well. This resulted in a Global Financial Crisis, causing the rich to get richer, and the poor to get poorer. The crisis was caused by carelessness practices in the US Government and on Wall Street, and were all preventable. We learned about the events leading to the 2008 Crisis through Inside Job, the documentary going into detail of what happened in the decades leading to and proceeding the bubble popping through interviews with US Government officials of the time, and many people from who caused the crisis all together through their actions. We also learned about events before and after the crisis in the book The Big Short, which did the same thing as Inside Job but went more in depth about how many people on Wall Street had no clue what they had been doing by creating all these agreements to loan money despite having no way to return the money. Wall Street had known this was a terrible idea for these people but had no idea the long term effects and financial consequences. We see these consequences in both the novel The Turner House and the short documentary, The Old Man and the Storm. Both the novel and documentary follows families who each have families being affected by the crisis, and not being affected at all. In The Old Man and the Storm, an old man of New Orleans, was impacted by Hurricane Katrina. He wants to save his family’s home and community by staying even though everyone else moved away, to rebuild. Only problem was that the bubble had only burst a year prior. This now left Herbert Gettridge, at almost eighty-five years old, to work to be able to afford his build, and building alone to try and make his home liveable with no power and no one else really rebuilding their homes. Everyone else just kind of gave up after the money the government promised never came. The novel The Turner House follows a large family, just like Mr. Gettridge had, and in the wake of the 2008 crisis, they must decide whether or not to sell their childhood home when their mom falls too sick and weak to take care of herself anymore. Also like Mr. Gettridge, their family ranges from really being affected by the crisis to not really making a difference to some. These sources gave us knowledge we did not have prior to the class as we were so young when the crisis began and many followed themes that the crisis followed as well. 

The last novel we read really helped understand how a financial crisis can impact the world. In Parable of the Sower, written by Octavia Butler, the novel follows a young girl in the years 2024 through 2027 who lives in a time where many people are struggling financially and most are homeless. Financial ruin causes people to turn to violence and stealing to be able to provide food and money for themselves and family. This causes many families to move to villages with walls around them to keep the violence, drugs, and animals out.  Things like food, water, amd money are hard to come by, so Laurens father keeps a job at a college and keeps his neighborhood safe in his free time. In the neighborhood, it begins with small things going missing, but all hell breaks loose after a bullet from beyond the wall hits a child through the gate. Shortly after, Laurens father disappears and people from beyond the wall who use a drug to make setting fire feel good, destroys their homes and kills many of the people from the culdesac, including the rest of Laurens family. She flees with two other survivors heading north, for Canada, to escape the mess of America. Along the way her and her group meet many other people, including Bankhole, her older boyfriend, who is heading for his sisters farmland in California. Lauren reluctantly agreed to join and they find the house torched, but she decides its the perfect place to start a new society with her new family. This novel is like many of the other resources we’ve used to learn about the 2008 Financial Crisis. For example, this story had many characters, especially after they left Robledo. After leaving we meet many people also seeking refuge from the situation in the US. We also saw many characters in The Big Short, Inside Job and in The Turner House. We also see the characters facing a crisis, like Mr.Gettridge in The Old Man and the Storm, where his world is in shambles, and he cannot afford to or find a way to fix and rebuild their neighborhood. We also see many being expelled, expulsion is a theme throughout every text and documentary we’ve used this semester, from King Lear  to A Mercy. Many of the themes from sources used this semester have helped us understand the 2008 crisis better. 

There are many themes in both Parable of the Sower that many faced in the 2008 crisis. One example is that the world in the novel had many of the same problems, such as high prices on gas, bread, and water. In the beginning of the novel, Lauren talks about the prices of groceries being so high, they make bread from acorns and they catch rain water to recycle instead of buying clean water. I know from both The Turner House and from talking with my parents after watching Inside Job that the prices on foods and other goods went up, this included a spike in gas prices as my dad had told me, and housing, that Lelah from The Turner House taught me. She just jumped from place to place to have somewhere to stay as she could not actually afford to live there with no job and a gambling addiction. Which also brings me to my next point, that in Parable of the Sower and The Turner House, there were themes of addiction. In Parable of the Sower, it was to drugs that would cause violence, such as the one that makes fire better than sex, or the one Laurens mother used while she was pregnant that gave Lauren too much empathy, causing her to physically feel other peoples pain. Another example of addiction and gamling was seen in Inside Job, The Big Short, and throughout the crisis in 2008. Many of the men on Wall Street used drugs, such as cocaine, and then gambled with people’s money and homes, mostly causing the people with less, to really end up with less. Like in The Turner House, many ended up homeless. Homelessness and expulsion from one’s home is another connection between all the sources from this class. In Parable of the Sower, the poor are forced onto the streets and turn to violence to be able to get goods. In 2008, many people were homeless and forced to either live in a car, like Lelah in The Turner House, or forced into tent camps as we saw in The Old Man and the Storm. Expulsion was a theme seen repeatedly throughout all of our resources, and throughout the crisis. This theme ranges from novels like Parable of the Sower, written in 1994, way before the bubble burst in the crisis, but this theme is seen over and over throughout history, it was also a theme in King Lear written in around 1605, according to the Royal Shakespeare Company website. Expulsion was a theme easily predicted to happen once again, as it happened forever. In this course, we learned not only about what happened in 2008 and how it was preventable and just a result of negligence, but also the themes such as expulsion and bubbling. And we see these things happening in 1605, all the way until now, possibly facing another financial crisis caused by the pandemic. The concept of GLOBE’s statement that students are gaining practice to “reflect upon changes in learning and outlook over time”, can be seen through the course. We learned about expulsion in King Lear and how it affected them in a pre-christan british society, we learned how expulsion affected Florens in A Mercy in the 17th century when she was given up by her mother as part of a trade. We see how this theme stays present throughout the course and how it has affected each time period, even with Parable of the Sower being set in the future. We can use our sources of information to learn from the 2008 crisis, and try to prevent that from happening, by using GLOBE’s goal of reflection to learn from past mistakes for a better future. 

This class has taught me so much about not only the 2008 housing crisis and the key concepts and themes seen throughout, but about collaboration and the importance of slowing down and dissecting. Maybe if the people of Wall Street took this course, they would have slowed down to understand that their actions had serious consequences. If they would have cared or not since it benefited them, is another topic, but they truly had no clue what they were doing, but they not only gambled with the economy but the wealth of the people, which caused distrust in the government, banks, loans, and Wall Street in general.

Myah Dombroski

Annie Urig

Mackenzie Gillen

Giovanni Cicoria-Timm

Ava McCann

Andre Bianchi

Throughout The Big Short by Michael Lewis, the book focuses primarily on those who are going to be potentially benefiting from the infamous 2008 Housing Crisis and not those who were negatively impacted by it. The Big Short provides an insider perspective on the financial crisis and the creation of the credit default swap market. Unlike most portrayals of the crisis, The Big Short introduces those who gained from it, providing a story that had never before been told. The book takes place in mainly corporate settings and involves characters who are mostly employees in the finance sector. The Big Short shows the business side of the crash and does not involve the personal aspect of the effects the event has had on everyday Americans. The book goes in-depth about how the crash came to occur, discussing how risky the subprime mortgage bonds could potentially be and the eventual result it had on the economy and millions of people all across the country.

Although The Big Short provides a detailed depiction of the 2008 Housing Crisis, the depiction is not relatable to the average reader, which is a huge thing that is missing. The Big Short is a story written by an economist about the economy, using terminology and phrasings that, unless the reader is an economist themselves, is generally unfamiliar. On the other hand, The Turner House by Angela Flournoy provides a story about the same Housing Crisis, but through the lens of a middle-class family, something to which every reader can in some way relate. This makes it so that not only is it more impactful, but also more easily understood. Without relatable values, emotions, and moments, The Big Short makes the situation seem more distant, and less terrible, while the 2008 Housing Crisis was one of the most devastating things to hit the American economy in the last few decades. 

The Turner House sheds light on a more personal perspective on how people were affected by the 2008 financial crisis. The Big Short shows an economical standpoint on houses and loans, and how they only affect and benefit the brokers and the company. The Turner House shows the emotional values of the homes and the effects on a family. It also depicts how each sibling is affected in different ways and individually shows their thoughts and feelings. 

There are several examples of the emotional connection that The Turner House provides. While The Big Short provides an economical perspective, The Turner House shows the reader how the issues presented are applicable in real-world scenarios. Because there is an abundance of siblings within The Turner House, many of them hold different views on what should be done with their childhood home while living through the 2008 recession. While Cha Cha, the oldest Turner child, is conversing with Marlene, the fifth Turner child, she states, “If you sell the house I will never forgive you… do this and you break my heart” (198). This quote provides an example of the emotions that come along with the idea of selling the house caused by the recession. The main factor in this conflict of decision is the mother, Viola. Viola is in favor of keeping the house and although she does not currently live there due to illness, she has aspirations of being back in her home. She states, “‘And I don’t want to lose it,’ Viola continued. ‘I plan on movin’ back just as soon as I get strong again. Just a couple more months” (40). This issue also causes emotional conflict for her children and makes the decision much more difficult. 

When it comes to comparing The Big Short to The Turner House, the first thing that caught our attention was the different perspectives provided in each of these texts. The Turner House was a more understandable and relatable story, which made the book itself more effective. In The Big Short, most of the terminology was lost on us as readers, which made it harder to comprehend what was happening and relate to it. For this reason, The Turner House provided a clearer understanding of the situation for readers who didn’t have a firsthand experience with the crisis. As a group, we discussed being too young to remember the Housing Crisis, but The Turner House provides us with a better understanding of the struggles that our families may have experienced. Many families, such as ours, experienced one or more family members losing their jobs, which led to a decrease in financial stability and a need, in some cases, to sell their house to make up for it. The use of pathos within The Turner House makes it an overall more effective text than The Big Short and provides us with more insight into the challenges of the crisis. The use of many siblings allows us to see the different situations people were facing throughout the crisis and makes some characters relatable to what our families face as a result.

Giovanni Cicoria-Timm

Annie Urig

Isabelle Hoff

Ryan Trebing

Myah Dombroski

Throughout the course of King Lear by William Shakespeare, we see the terms liquid, liquidity, and swapping interact with the concept of expulsion. According to the Oxford dictionary, liquid refers to a “substance that flows freely but is of constant volume, having a consistency like that of water or oil”, while liquidity is, “the ease of how quickly an asset can be converted into another asset.” The term swapping also plays a huge role in the topic around expulsion and this is defined by Investopedia as, “ a derivative contract through which two parties exchange the cash flows or liabilities from two different financial instruments, normally involving cash flow such as a loan or bond.” 

One way we see the term “liquid” being present within King Lear is when Goneril and Regan were expressing the love they had for their father. Despite their true feelings, they conformed to what they knew their father would like to hear in order to get what they wanted, which seemed very liquid. They went on about how much they loved their father to ensure they would receive their share of their father’s land and power, despite their true feelings they had for their father. King Lear’s youngest daughter, Cordelia, however, was not liquid in her response to his request of unconditional love. Once she announced her love would not be as great as her sisters, we witnessed the liquidity of King Lear himself. As he was hoping for flattery and love, he was offended to receive the truth from his favorite daughter. The liquidity of King Lear’s power is present when he says, “With my two daughters’ dowers digest the third. Let pride, which she calls plainness, marry her”(page 15, 144-145). This quote says a lot about Lear and both the liquidity of the love and power he has for each of his daughters, that if they betray him then they will no longer receive any dowry. The love Lear has for his daughters appears to be conditional. If anyone contradicts his beliefs, he will no longer love or accept them. The expulsion of both his daughter, Cordelia, and his servant, the Earl of Kent, can be seen as a result of them bruising Lear’s ego. Being “liquid”, as Goneril and Regan were, this allowed them to avoid being expelled by their father’s liquidity of power. 

Swapping is evident in King Lear in how Lear passes his land between different people based on who he’s decided at that moment his favorite is. He swaps back and forth between who is getting his assets, the kingdom, and never stays with a solid decision. This interacts with expulsion because Cordelia is banished, or expelled, from the kingdom while Lear keeps making different decisions. As Lear says, “Thou hast her, France. Let her be thine, for we have no such daughter, nor shall ever see that face of hers again. Therefore begone without our grace, our love, our benison” (page 25, lines 304-308). Because Lear is swapping his assets, those around him are having their lives changed as they wait for him to make a final decision. By giving his daughter to the King of France, he also swapped his love from Cordelia to his other daughters. King Lear says Cordelia is no longer his daughter and that she betrayed him, which results in him expelling her from both his family and his kingdom. King Lear at its core is a piece about loyalty, fraud, and trust. By studying these themes through the lens of liquid/liquidity, swapping, and expulsion, we as readers are able to more deeply understand not only the practice of analyzing a text, but also lessons which apply to real life. In regards to what question this exercise brings up, there’s the question of, “How will these themes present themselves in other works?” Going forward it will be interesting to see what contributes to someone’s loyalty and how the terms liquid, liquidity, and swapping are affected by how loyal someone is. This is important because there will always be themes or morals to look for in reading; practicing on King Lear gives us a look into how and why we do this exercise, so that we have the context for when we try it in the future.