Thought I’d offer a brief history of the financial crisis as seen through Google Insights, which measures the popularity of a search term over time.
Interest in the word subprime spiked a couple of times in 2007 (above) before we figured out it was all about toxic debts (below):
and credit crunches:
Then we realised suddenly we had to learn a bit more about Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae:
and even basic terms like liquidity:
Useful information. And it wasn’t just an economics lesson. We had to gen up on countries that we had recently given little attention to, like Iceland:
Although it’s worth keeping it all in perspective. Search for the word meltdown, a commonly used term to capture the excitement of the past few weeks, and you get this. Clearly rising interest, but that spoke in 2005? It’s linked to Ice Age: The Meltdown, which grossed $70 million at the box office in its debut week:
