Which 2008 global crash followed the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the U.S. housing bubble?

The 2008 global crash that followed the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the U.S. housing bubble was the global financial crisis.

The crisis grew from high-risk mortgage lending, rapidly expanding housing credit, complex securities, and heavy reliance on short-term borrowing. When U.S. house prices fell and mortgage defaults increased, losses spread through banks and investors holding mortgage-related assets.

Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy on September 15, 2008. Its failure intensified fear about the financial system, and stock markets around the world fell sharply. Governments and central banks responded with emergency lending, bank rescues, guarantees, interest-rate cuts, and fiscal measures.

The crisis was broader than a stock-market event. It caused a severe recession, major unemployment, housing foreclosures, and a sovereign-debt emergency in parts of Europe. In the United States, the S&P 500 reached a closing high in October 2007 and did not reach its crisis low until March 2009. The collapse is often called the Great Recession’s financial crisis, but the recession and the market crash are related rather than identical terms.