Time line of financial melt down..from Wikipedia

Intense time line on the whole mess.  Very detailed, with lots of pertinent links. Here it is.

• 1968: The Government mortgage-related agency, Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) is converted from a federal government entity to a stand-alone government sponsored enterprise, often referred to as "GSE". The move takes the debt of Fannie Mae off of the books of the government.

• 1970 Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac) is created by an act of Congress, as a GSE, to create competition for Fannie Mae.
• 1977: Community Reinvestment Act passed to require banks and savings and loan associations to offer credit to lower income individuals and small businesses
• 1980: The Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act of 1980 granted all thrifts, including savings and loan associations, the power to make consumer and commercial loans and to issue transaction accounts, but with little regulatory oversight of competing banks.
• 1985–1991: Savings and Loan Crisis caused by rising interest rates and over development in the commercial real estate sector, and exacerbated by deregulation of savings and loan lending standards and a reduction in capital reserve requirements from 5% to 3%.
• 1989: Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act ("FIRREA") enacted which established the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC), closing hundreds of insolvent thrifts and moved regulatory authority to the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS).
• 1992: The Federal Housing Enterprises Financial Safety and Soundness Act of 1992 requires Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to devote a percentage of their lending to support affordable housing
• 1994: Riegle-Neal Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act of 1994 (IBBEA) repeals the interstate provisions of the Bank Holding Company Act of 1956 that regulated the actions of bank holding companies.
• 1995: U.S. President Bill Clinton strengthens Community Reinvestment Act regulations to require banks to loan to, and Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to buy mortgages of, even less qualified borrowers
• 1998: Incipient housing bubble as inflation-adjusted home price appreciation exceeds 10%/year in most West Coast metropolitan areas^[1]
• 1999: Fannie Mae eases credit to aid mortgage lending (September)^[2]; Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act repeals Glass-Steagall Act, deregulates banking, insurance and securities into a financial services industry (November)
• 2000: Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 bans regulation of credit default swaps, many of which were sold to insure mortgage-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations that later lost value as their component subprime mortgages went into default. Concerns over swap issuers' ability to cover all of the defaulted debt they had guaranteed contributed to financial crises for companies such as Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and AIG in 2008.^[3][4][5]
• 2000–2003: Early 2000s recession (exact time varies by country)
• 1995–2001: Dot-com bubble and collapse
• 2001–2005: United States housing bubble accelerates
  • 2001: US Federal Reserve lowers Federal funds rate 11 times, from 6.5% (May 2000) to 1.75% (December 2001).^[6]
  • 2002: Annual home price appreciation of 10% or more in California, Florida, and most Northeastern states.
  • 2003: President G.W. Bush administration recommended what the NY Times called "the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago." This change was to move governmental supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac under a new agency created within the Department of the Treasury. The changes were blocked by Congress.^[7]
  • June 2003: Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan lowers federal reserve’s key interest rate to 1%, the lowest in 45 years.^[8]
  • 2004-2005: Arizona, California, Florida, Hawaii, and Nevada record price increases in excess of 25% per year.
  • 2005: Booming housing market halts abruptly in many parts of the U.S. in late summer of 2005
• 2006: Prices are flat, home sales fall, resulting in inventory buildup. U.S. Home Construction Index is down over 40% as of mid-August 2006 compared to a year earlier.
  • May 5: In possibly the first casualty of the looming subprime crisis, Kirkland, Washington based Merit Financial Inc. files for bankruptcy and closes its doors, firing all but 80 of its 410 employees, kept to wind down the business. Chief financial officer, Ryan Kidd, said that Merit’s marketplace had declined about 40% and sales were not bringing in enough revenue to support the overhead of running the company.^[8]
  • Fall: FASB issued a standard with the title "Fair Value Measurements" - FASB Statement no. 157 ^[9][10]
• 2007: Home sales continue to fall. The plunge in existing-home sales is the steepest since 1989. In Q1/2007, S&P/Case-Shiller house price index records first year-over-year decline in nationwide house prices since 1991.^[11] The subprime mortgage industry collapses, and a surge of foreclosure activity (twice as bad as 2006^[12]) and rising interest rates threaten to depress prices further as problems in the subprime markets spread to the near-prime and prime mortgage markets.^[13] The U.S. Treasury secretary calls the bursting housing bubble "the most significant risk to our economy."^[14]
  • January 3: Ownit Mortgage Solutions Inc. files for Chapter 11. Records show that Ownit Mortgage Solutions owed Merrill Lynch around $93 million at the time of filing.^[8]
  • February 5: Mortgage Lenders Network USA Inc., the country's 15th largest subprime lender with $3.3 billion in loans funded in third quarter 2006, files for Chapter 11.^[8]
  • February–March: Subprime industry collapse; more than 25 subprime lenders declaring bankruptcy, announcing significant losses, or putting themselves up for sale.
  • April 2: New Century Financial, largest U.S. subprime lender, files for chapter 11 bankruptcy.
  • June 7: Bear Stearns, Bear Stearns informs investors in two of its funds, the High-Grade Structured Credit Strategies Enhanced Leverage Fund and the High-Grade Structured Credit Fund that it was halting redemptions.
  • July 19: Dow Jones Industrial Average closes above 14,000 for the first time in its history.^[15]
  • August: worldwide "credit crunch" as subprime mortgage backed securities are discovered in portfolios of banks and hedge funds around the world, from BNP Paribas to Bank of China. Many lenders stop offering home equity loans and "stated income" loans. Federal Reserve injects about $100B into the money supply for banks to borrow at a low rate.
  • August 6: American Home Mortgage files for chapter 11 bankruptcy.
  • August 7: Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton proposes a $1 billion bailout fund to help homeowners at risk for foreclosure [1].
  • August 16: Countrywide Financial Corporation, the biggest U.S. mortgage lender, narrowly avoids bankruptcy by taking out an emergency loan of $11 billion from a group of banks.^[16]
  • August 17: Federal Reserve lowers the discount rate by 50 basis points to 5.75% from 6.25%.
  • August 31: President Bush announces a limited bailout of U.S. homeowners unable to pay the rising costs of their debts.^[17] Ameriquest, once the largest subprime lender in the U.S., goes out of business;^[18]
  • September 1–3: Fed Economic Symposium in Jackson Hole, WY addressed the housing recession that jeopardizes U.S. growth. Several critics argued that the Fed should use regulation and interest rates to prevent asset-price bubbles,^[19] blamed former Fed-chairman Alan Greenspan's low interest rate policies for stoking the U.S. housing boom and subsequent bust[2], and Yale University economist Robert Shiller warned of possible home price declines of fifty percent.^[20]
  • September 14: A run on the bank forms at the United Kingdom's Northern Rock bank precipitated by liquidity problems related to the subprime crisis.^[21]
  • September 17: Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan said "we had a bubble in housing" [3] and warns of "large double digit declines" in home values "larger than most people expect."
  • September 18: The Fed lowers interest rates by half a point (0.5%) in an attempt to limit damage to the economy from the housing and credit crises.^[22]
  • September 28: Television finance personality Jim Cramer warns Americans on The Today Show, "don't you dare buy a home—you'll lose money," causing a furor among realtors.^[23]
  • September 30: Affected by the spiraling mortgage and credit crises, Internet banking pioneer NetBank goes bankrupt^[24], and the Swiss bank UBS announced that it lost US$690 million in the third quarter.^[25]
  • October 10: Hope Now Alliance was created by the US Government and private industry to help some sub-prime borrowers. ^[26]
  • October 15–17: A consortium of U.S. banks backed by the U.S. government announced a "super fund" of $100 billion to purchase mortgage-backed securities whose mark-to-market value plummeted in the subprime collapse.^[27] Both Fed chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson expressed alarm about the dangers posed by the bursting housing bubble; Paulson said "the housing decline is still unfolding and I view it as the most significant risk to our economy. … The longer housing prices remain stagnant or fall, the greater the penalty to our future economic growth."^[14]
  • October 31: Federal Reserve lowers the federal funds rate by 25 basis points to 4.5%.
  • November 1: Federal Reserve injects $41B into the money supply for banks to borrow at a low rate. The largest single expansion by the Fed since $50.35B on September 19, 2001.
  • November 15: FASB Statement no. 157 becomes effective for annual statements for fiscal years beginning after Nov. 15, 2007, and for interim reports prepared in that initial fiscal year.^[9][10]
  • December 6: President Bush announced a plan to voluntarily and temporarily freeze the mortgages of a limited number of mortgage debtors holding adjustable rate mortgages (ARM). He also ask Members Of Congress to: 1. pass legislation to modernize the FHA. 2. temporarily reform the tax code to help homeowners refinance during this time of housing market stress. 3. pass funding to support mortgage counseling. 4. pass legislation to reform Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs) like Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. ^[28].
• 2008: Financial crisis escalates with collapse of major lenders and investors
  • March 14, 2008: Bear Stearns gets Fed funding as shares plummet ^[29].
  • March 16, 2008: Bear Stearns gets acquired for $2 a share by JPMorgan Chase in a fire sale avoiding bankruptcy. The deal is backed by Federal Reserve providing up to $30B to cover possible Bear Stearn losses. ^[30].
  • May 6, 2008: UBS AG Swiss bank announced plans to cut 5,500 jobs by the middle of 2009^[31]
  • September 7, 2008: Federal takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac^[32][33]
  • September 14, 2008: Merrill Lynch sold to Bank of America amidst fears of a liquidity crisis and Lehman Brothers collapse^[34]
  • September 15, 2008: Lehman Brothers files for bankruptcy protection^[35]
  • September 16, 2008: Moody's and Standard and Poor's downgrade ratings on AIG's credit on concerns over continuing losses to mortgage-backed securities, sending the company into fears of insolvency.^[36][37]
  • September 17, 2008: The US Federal Reserve loans $85 billion to American International Group (AIG) to avoid bankruptcy.
  • September 19, 2008: Paulson financial rescue plan unveiled after a volatile week in stock and debt markets.
  • September 25, 2008: Washington Mutual was seized by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and its banking assets were sold to JP MorganChase for $1.9bn.
  • September 29, 2008: Emergency Economic Stabilization Act defeated 228-205 in the United States House of Representatives.
  • September 29, 2008: Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation announces that Citigroup Inc. would acquire banking operations of Wachovia.^[38]
  • October 1, 2008: The U.S. Senate passes HR1424, their version of the bailout bill.
  • October 3, 2008: The U.S. House of Representatives passes HR1424 and President George W. Bush signs it into law. It contains also easing of the accounting rules (FASB 157) that forced companies to collapse because of the existence of toxic mortgage-related investments. ^{[39] [9][10]}

• • October 6, 2008: The London market declines by 8% - its biggest one day fall ever. Other European markets fell by a similar amount.