The Financial Crisis and the Housing Market Crash in the United States: A Systematic Analysis Using Marxist Theory and Triangulative Methodology

Abstract

In 2008, a financial meltdown landed at the doorstep of every United States citizen. Banks needed bailouts, stock markets crashed, and numerous civilians were evicted from their homes. These aspects contributed to a parlous global economic recession. The exact reasons for this recession are speculated, but greed and fraud are prominent among them. There was not a supply vs. demand or free market but instead an artificial demand for housing. Karl Marx’s theory (or Marxism) explains a social change in the context of economic factors where the means of production provide the economic base, which then influences the political and ideological superstructure. Therefore, this paper hypothesizes that it is the manner in which the banks and government used greed and fraud to run the United Sates that led the country into a recession. Primary and secondary data were collected from books, journals, and Internet sources by using the document analysis technique in order to test the hypothesis. These sources were supplemented by expert interviews. The substantive findings generated after the data were systematically analyzed indicate that the hypothesis is tenable, notwithstanding potential dispute.