Senate Democrats are trumpeting this Pew study that outlines the broader costs of the financial crisis:
- $100,000 – The cost to the typical American family in combined losses from declining stock and home values.
- $360 billion – The estimated loss in wages due to slower economic growth from October 2008 through December 2009 – $3,250 on average per U.S. household.
- 5.5 million – The number of additional jobs lost due to slower economic growth during the financial crisis, compared to the September 2008 CBO predictions.
- $3.4 trillion – The total loss in real-estate wealth from July 2008 through March 2009 – roughly $30,300 per U.S. household.
- 500,000 – The additional number of homes foreclosed upon during the acute phase of the financial crisis.
- $7.4 trillion – The total loss in stock wealth from July 2008 through March 2009 – more than $66,000 per U.S. household.
Some of this is a little muddled, since the recession and the financial crash are both separate and a mutually reinforcing phenomena. It's hard to say specifically how much of this loss is the fault of the recession and how much is the fault of the financial crash because they drove each other forward over time. There's also the question of how much of the losses were just artificial gains connected to the housing bubble. Nonetheless, we can see very clearly how much this hurt every American and how urgent it is to put in place measures to prevent this from happening again.
-- Tim Fernholz
