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  • Hi, I’m John Green, this is CrashCourse U.S. history and weve finally done it,

  • weve reached the end of history!

  • Ahh. Stan, says that history never ends but whatever weve reached the part that Me

  • From the Present is in. So we aren’t going to cover the astonishing

  • results of the 2016 presidential election. What we are going to do is try to talk about

  • historical events that are also current events. Future John Green here to tell you that in

  • a stunning turn of events the 2020 presidential election will be won by - Harry Styles. I

  • know that he’s English and under 35 but were going to change the constitution to

  • make it possible. Becausethat’s how much we love Harry Styles in 2020.

  • Intro So when we last left George W Bush, his approval

  • rating was dropping to the lowest number in President of the United States approval rating

  • history. And the U.S. was facing what turned out to

  • be the 2nd worst economic crises in the past 150 years. A crisis that remains unnamed because

  • were kind of still in it. But I’d like to propose a couple names:

  • the Wall Street Wamboozle, the Financial Fartstorm. However, knowing historians they will inevitably

  • call it like The Major Recession of 2008 - 2012. Booooo!

  • So what caused the Financial Fartstorm that began in late 2008? Well, it was a mixture

  • of public and private activities that tilted towards short-term economic thinking, speculation

  • and irresponsible spending. First, there are the Federal Reserve’s policies

  • of keeping interest rates freakishly low in response to the 2001-2002 recession. Now,

  • this worked, but the recession ended and interest rates stayed low.

  • And this, combined with unscrupulous mortgage lenders, encouraged people to buy houses that

  • they could not afford. In the early 2000s, many millions of Americans,

  • including certain Crash Course US History hosts, bought real estate assuming that its

  • value would increase rapidly and forever, so that when you were unable to make payments,

  • you’d just sell it, pay off the mortgage, and make a tidy profit.

  • It turns out this was essentially a pyramid scheme and, my friends, I was not at the top

  • of the pyramid. So back then you could buy a house with a

  • so-called NINJA loan which sadly this did not involve mutant ninja turtles or pizza.

  • Ninja stands for No Income, No Job, and No Assets.

  • Traditionally, people in this situation can’t borrow hundreds of thousands of dollars, but

  • in the early 2000’s, these loans were giving the benign sounding designationsubprime.”

  • So it’s important to understand that it wasn’t just like big Wall Street banks financing

  • huge deals with debt, regular people were doing it - like me.

  • All this created a classic housing bubble, which was doomed to burst. Also, with the

  • interest on government Treasury Bills effectively zero, investors had to look elsewhere for

  • better returns, which led to the idea of issuing securitiesthese bond-like instruments

  • that were backed by mortgages. The thinking was that the interest people

  • paid on their mortgages would supply the underlying value of the security, the way that like tax

  • revenues are the source of value of a government bond.

  • Now of course there’d be a minority of people who’d fail to pay off their securitised

  • mortgages, but most people would pay because, you know, they’d want to keep their houses.

  • But it turns out that if you haven’t paid any money to own your house, you don’t feel

  • all that invested in it. Now there are even more reasons why these

  • securities were terrible ideas, but the important thing is that when the mortgages turned bad,

  • these securities became toxic assets. Basically, the people who held them suddenly

  • didn’t know what they were worth if anything and banks overreacted to this uncertainty

  • as banks like to do by not lending out any money.

  • And that’s called a credit freeze, which is very bad. So that’s how a housing bubble

  • turned into a full-fledged financial crisis. Alright Let’s go to the ThoughtBubble.

  • When banks stop lending, business can’t function. So the stock market collapsed, with

  • the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropping from above 14,000 to around 8,000 which wiped

  • out about $7trillion of shareholder wealth. And a majority of Americans had money invested

  • in the stock market, much of it in the form of retirement funds.

  • With it being harder to borrow money, Americans finally cut back on their spending, which

  • resulted in many businesses failing and by the end of 2008, 2.5 million jobs had been

  • lost, many of which were in manufacturing and construction.

  • And because those were both male-dominated fields, it led to another change, by mid-2009

  • more women than men held paying jobs for the first time in American history.

  • In the last three months of 2008 and the first three months of 2009 our GDP dropped 6%. And

  • World Trade cratered and that led to unemployment and misery worldwide.

  • The event that triggered the chaos was the failure of the investment bank Lehman Brothers

  • in September, just 2 months before the presidential election. The Bush Administration tried to

  • stop the damage by getting Congress to pass the Troubled Assets Relief Program, or TARP,

  • which was basically a $700 billion bailout for banks like Citigroup and Bank of America,

  • insurance companies like AIG and mortgage insurers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

  • Regular individuals also received tarps, but they had to buy them and they weren’t as

  • cool. Anyway, these bailouts were probably necessary

  • to stop a complete failure of the financial system but they were very unpopular. Most

  • of the banks that received a rescue from the taxpayers didn’t help the homeowners facing

  • foreclosure, and despite receiving millions of federal dollars, AIG continued to pay huge

  • bonuses to its top executives. Thanks, Thoughtbubble. So, the end of the Bush years looked a lot

  • like the end of the Hoover years. After a decade of Americans spending more than they

  • had, government taking a back seat to business interests and deregulation of industries going

  • hand in hand with increasing corruption, Barack Obama was faced with America’s biggest economic

  • challenge since the Great Depression. Oh, by the way, we got a new president, Barack

  • Obama, who 50 years before his election couldn’t have sat in the front of a bus in Alabama.

  • So I know all the green parts of not-America are mad at us for causing the great financial

  • meltdown and whatever, and fair enough, but we do make some progress now and again

  • Barack Obama was young, he was relatively new on the national scene, and represented

  • change. He appealed to young people and minorities, and he harnessed the power of social media

  • to communicate with supporters, and get out the vote, and also raise TONS of money.

  • Also, he was on the cover of US Weekly. You didn’t see Martin Van Buren on the cover

  • of US Weekly. What’s that? It didn’t exist? Of course it existed!

  • In 2008 Obama’s election At the time Obama’s election seemed a political watershed and

  • not just because he was the first African American president. He appeared to break Republicans

  • solid hold on the south, he won Virginia, and North Carolina and Florida, and his supporters

  • represented a coalition of African Americans, and Hispanics, white liberals and, especially,

  • young people. Oh, it’s time for the mystery document?

  • I hope it’s from that US Weekly profile. The rules here are simple - he said for the

  • final time. I’ll tell you one thing that’s going to

  • change here at Crash Course, no more shock pens. I guess the author of the Mystery Document,

  • if I’m wrong I get shocked. Alright, let’s see what we got here today.

  • For everywhere we look, there is work to be done. The state of our economy calls for

  • action, bold and swift. And we will act, not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new

  • foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital

  • lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. Well restore science to its rightful place,

  • and wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its cost.

  • We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories.

  • And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a

  • new age. All this we can do. All this we will do.”

  • Speaking of things that we will do, I will get this right it’s Barack Obama’s first

  • inaugural! Ba-bam! No more shocks. The getting shocked part of

  • my life has come to an end. Hopefully in Crash Course Literature when

  • I get things right I’ll get a puppy and when I get things wrong I’ll get a rainbow!

  • Stan says that my only reward is not being punished.

  • So Obama promised to change the culture of Washington. He would end partisan squabbling….

  • sorry I couldn’t even get through that sentence. To be fair, he did end the squabbling, it

  • became full blown yelling. He also wanted a foreign policy based on diplomacy,

  • he wanted to reduce inequality and increase access to health care, he wanted to curbgreed

  • and irresponsibilitythat had helped bring on the economic crisis, and he wanted to end

  • the Bush tax cuts. He also wanted to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and, as critics

  • mocked, reverse global warming. That’s a tall order

  • So how has he done? Not bad. Well, some would say not great either.

  • For instance he launched diplomatic outreach to the Muslim world, but a lot of this was

  • more rhetoric than action, as in his verbal support for the revolution that overthrew

  • Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. And he did keep some of his campaign promises,

  • for instance he signed into law the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which made it easier for women

  • to sue when they had been systemically underpaid and he also reversed an earlier executive

  • order that limited women’s reproductive rights.

  • And speaking of women he appointed two of them to the Supreme Court, Elena Kagan and

  • Sonia Sotomayor, the court’s first Hispanic melmber.

  • He also followed through on his promise to end the war in Iraq, although to be fair the

  • Bush administration had really set him up for success there. And he increased the number

  • of U.S. troops in Afghanistan as part of a longer term plan to end the war there, which

  • has sort of worked? He also authorized a successful military operation

  • that killed Osama bin Laden on May 2, 2011. I was in Amsterdam at the time, and the Dutch

  • media came to my house to ask me how Americans felt about this and I said, “Good!”

  • On the other hand Obama has been criticized internationally for backing off his promise

  • to close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, and he has largely followed the Bush administration's

  • policies with the war on terror. But the Obama administration has deployed

  • far more unmanned drones to kill suspected militants around the world.

  • Despite provoking outrage on the left and the right, Americans generally appear to support

  • the use of drones and extra-legal assassination of accused terrorists. Obama also kept in

  • place Bush’s executive power and in fact expanded it in some ways with NSA’s PRISM

  • program. What about that financial mess he inherited?

  • Well, Obama was fortunate to have a Democratic Congress for his first term in office, so

  • he could push through a lot of legislation. This included a sweeping stimulus package

  • with nearly $800 Billion in new spending, most of it on infrastructure, that was signed

  • into law on February 17, 2009, just 28 days into Obama’s presidency.

  • In the end, the recovery act cost $787 billion - more than the government had spent on a

  • package of programs ever. More than the Great Society. More than the New Deal.

  • Did it work,? Well it depends on who you ask. Among 9 large studies, 6 found that the stimulus

  • did have a positive effect on growth and employment, 3 found that it had little or no effect, and

  • economists are equally divided. The stimulus is estimated to have saved about

  • 3 million jobs, but it also increased the deficit quite a bit.

  • So Liberal economists see America’s current 7% unemployment rate as evidence that the

  • stimulusKeynesian policies should have gone further, while conservatives say that

  • the stimulus exploded the federal deficit and debt.

  • Regardless, the recovery for the past few years has been steady, but quite slow.

  • Lastly, let’s turn to Obama’s signature policy proposal the Affordable Care Act, better

  • known as Obamacare. The Affordable Care Act is arguably the most

  • significant piece of social legislation since Medicare. And it seeks to move the United

  • States into the ranks of countries with universal health care.

  • A list that includes every industrialized nation on Earth. Were number one among

  • countries that don’t have universal health care.

  • So Obamacare aims to reduce the number of Americans without health insurance by making

  • it easier and less expensive for the uninsured to buy it privately. It’s not a government

  • insurance plan and the government will subsidize those who can’t afford insurance.

  • That’s going to be expensive, but fortunately our health care system is so astonishly inefficient

  • that there are lots of places to save money and the Congressional Budget Office at least

  • thinks it’s going to be a wash. But controversially, the acts insurance mandate

  • means that if you don’t have insurance from your employer you MUST buy it or else you

  • have to pay a penalty. In 2012 the core of the law was upheld by

  • the Supreme Court when they ruled that thiants was a constitutional use of the government’s

  • taxing power. As for Obama’s success at ending partisan

  • politics, not one Congressional Republican voted for Obamacare, and many used it to campaign

  • against Democrats in the 2010 mid-term elections. And while the success of the Affordable Care

  • Act won’t be able to be determined for many years there was a huge backlash against both

  • Obama and his policies, on Facebook, and Twitter, and also the mysterious world of non-the-Internet

  • One of these responses was The Tea Party, a reference to the Boston Tea Party and an

  • acronym for Taxed Enough Already. For the record, I just want to say that the

  • vast majority of American’s taxes are lower now than they have been at any point in the

  • last one hundred years. But the Tea Party is also very concerned that

  • deficits are out of control and that rising government spending is going to ruin America.

  • Bolstered by 80 or so new Tea Party congresspeople, the Republicans took control of the House

  • in 2010 and John, it’s pronounced, Boehner became the Speaker of The House.

  • All these Tea Party freshmen took their mandate to cut taxes and reduce spending very seriously,

  • and that made it difficult for Boehner to compromise with the Obama administration.

  • Over in the Senate, Democrats held a slim majority, but because of the filibuster needed

  • 60 votes to do anything, which made them look very dysfunctional

  • In fact, the 111th congress was one of the least productive in American history.

  • Obama was re-elected president in 2012, the Republicans continued to control The House,

  • the Democrats continued to have slim majority in the Senate, and now America is facing something

  • of a political crisis. Unwillingness to compromise precipitated a

  • series of mini-fiscal crises over things like the budget and raising the debt ceiling. Things

  • that Congress used to be able to hash out back when their business was governing not

  • ideological rigidity. Meanwhile, the economy has slowly added jobs

  • and looks halfway decent at the moment mostly because Europe looks so bad. Yay?

  • That qualified questioning yay is about the last word I have to say on American history.

  • The particular brands of ideological certainty that we see today may seem new but if you

  • look at American history you realize that this has been going on for a long time.

  • The Tea Party is right that the founding fathers would be astonished by the extend of the American

  • government and the extent to which it’s involved in the lives of Americans.

  • And progressives are right that people around the world have benefited from government investment

  • in healthcare and infrastructure and transportation. We have to ask ourselves again, “What does

  • freedom really mean?” Can you be free when you live in poverty or

  • when youre one injury away from bankruptcy? Can you be free when the government can go

  • to a secret court to read your text messages? We know that you can’t be free if youre

  • dead, so is the government’s job to protect you not only by having a standing army but

  • also making you wear your seat belt? Those are ultimately ideological questions,

  • but we have to grapple with them in a real practical way. And the great story of American

  • governance is compromise. But that is also often been the tragedy of

  • American governance as when the Constitutional Convention compromised over whether African

  • American people were people. So if youve learned anything this year,

  • I hope its been that the American story that we find ourselves in now isn’t entirely

  • novel. And I think we have much to learn from those

  • who came before us, both from their successes and their many, many failures.

  • Thank you so much for watching Crash Course US History next we will be discussing literature.

  • Your first reading assignment The Odyssey. It’s a great book, I promise, youre gonna

  • like it. Thanks again for watching. I’ll see ya then.

  • Crash Course US History is made with the help of all of these nice people and it exists

  • because of your continuing support through Subbable.com. There is a link right there

  • that you can click to voluntarily subscribe and keep this show, you know, rolling.

  • Thank you, so much, to everyone that has watched and supported this show over the last two

  • years. I’m wearing the same shirt that I wore on the 1st episode of Crash Course World

  • History to celebrate two successful years of teaching history!

  • This has been one of the great professional joys of my life and I’m so grateful to everyone

  • that has helped make the show and everyone who has watched it. You can find a full list

  • of your reading for Crash Course Literature in the doobly-doo. Thank you again for watching,

  • and as we say in my hometown, “Don’t forget to be awesome

Hi, I’m John Green, this is CrashCourse U.S. history and weve finally done it,

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