Future of Finance
Finance is the study of how investors allocate their assets over time under conditions of certainty and uncertainty. The term financial crisis is applied broadly to a variety of situations in which some financial institutions or assets suddenly lose a large part of their value. In the 19th 20th and early 21st centuries, many financial crises were associated with banking fears, and many recessions coincided with these fears. Other circumstances that are often called financial crises include stock market crashes and the bursting of other financial bubbles, currency crises, and sovereign defaults. Financial crises directly result in a loss of paper wealth; they do not directly result in changes in the real economy unless a recession or depression follows.

The 2007–2012 global financial crisis, also known as the Global Financial Crisis and 2008 financial crisis, is considered by many economists to be the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. It resulted in the threat of total collapse from large financial institutions, the bailout of banks by national governments, and downturns in stock markets around the world. In many areas, the housing market also suffered, resulting in evictions, foreclosures and prolonged unemployment. The crisis played a significant role in the failure of key businesses, declines in consumer wealth estimated in trillions of US dollars, and a downturn in economic activity leading to the 2008–2012 global recession and contributing to the European sovereign-debt crisis.
Many economists have offered theories about how financial crises develop and how they could be prevented. There is little consensus, however, and financial crises are still a regular occurrence around the world.
The U.S. Senate's Levin–Coburn Report asserted that the crisis was the result of "high risk, complex financial products;