What if they decided not to lower interest rates like they did in 2003? Obviously the economy wouldn't have jumped as it did, but would we be better or worse off today?
We were headed into a nasty recession caused by the tech bubble and possibly the rise of emerging nations. Most of the ingredients that caused the current disaster was already in place. In hindsight, we now know that capital reserve bank requirements worldwide were too lax, insurers are under weak or non-existent oversight, ratings agencies face inherent conflicts of interest and that global trade imbalances cause extreme pressures for Americans to spend, borrow and finance. There's also too big to fail, a lesson we didn't learn from LTCM, our accelerated transition to a service economy (while SE Asia hollowed out manufacturing), and boomers wanting to feel like it was 1999 again. In hindsight, it seems like it wasn't a question of if, but a matter of when.
