The great financial crisis began on August 9, 2007, when French bank BNP Paribas froze three of its funds, saying it had no way of valuing the sub-prime mortgages lurking inside them, known as collateralised debt obligations.
Just over a month later, on September 14, 2007, rumours swept the UK that Northern Rock was about to go bankrupt, prompting huge queues outside its branches as customers clamoured to get their money back.
That was the first run on a British bank for 150 years. It wasn’t nationalised until February 17, 2008, after months of fear and loathing.
On March 14, 2008, investment bank Bear Stearns went bust but was bought out by JP Morgan.
Things went quiet for a while and on May 6, 2008, US Treasury secretary Hank Paulson told the Wall Street Journal: “I do believe that the worst is likely to be behind us.”
He got that wrong.
On September 7, 2008, the US government was forced to bail out mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which had guaranteed thousands of dodgy sub-prime mortgages.
All hell broke loose when US banking giant Lehman Brothers went bust on September 15, 2008.
That October, UK taxpayers were forced to bail out Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds TSB and Halifax-owner HBOS.
Things didn’t start to stabilise until the Bank of England and other central bankers slashed interest rates almost to zero in March 5, 2009, and printed trillions of virtual money through quantitative easing, or QE.
READ MORE: House price crash should have come 20 years ago – now it’s unstoppable
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