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Collecting Relics from the Recession

  • October 07, 2009

CollectingRelics100709Everyone has his own story to tell about the impact of the Great Recession, and the Museum of American Finance wants to use the power of social media to catalog them all.

The museum has set up Recessipedia, a Wikipedia-like site that allows users to write about how the financial crisis and global recession has affected them.

The idea is to gather stories and piece together a comprehensive view of the recession, much in the same way that a natural history museum would collect bones and pottery shards to flesh out the history of a bygone civilization.

One of the first Recessipedia contributors, NINJA Dad (the acronym means No Income, No Job or Assets), wrote about his daughter, an unemployed recent college grad who in 2006 bought a $250,000 house with a no-money-down subprime mortgage.

“She hasn't defaulted ... yet ... but periodically she calls crying her eyes out,” wrote NINJA Dad, who identified himself as a finance executive. “If she defaults, I wonder if she will ever be able to obtain a mortgage again, although her only mistake was to believe the hype about housing prices always going up.”

It’s hard not to feel bad for an individual caught in this situation, but this testimonial sheds some light on irresponsible borrowing decisions that helped inflate the real-estate bubble. Not all of the blame can be heaped onto the lenders. NINJA Dad himself wondered why his jobless daughter didn’t rent instead.

There was also excessive borrowing against home equity that saddled homeowners with crushing amounts of debt when home prices dropped. A University of Chicago study estimates that homeowners borrowed up to 30 cents for every dollar increase in home values during the peak bubble years.

Recessipedia provides an outlet for people to write about their personal experiences, and more stories like NINJA Dad’s may lead to a more inclusive view of what led up to the recession and why it has been so severe.

Check Out Recessipedia

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