News
A recession, housing slump and national credit squeeze were already entrenched a year ago, but the fiscal cataclysm came to a head in September 2008. Here's a time line of the events of that month and the financial and economic aftermath:
SEPT 7, 2008: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are placed in government conservatorship.
SEPT. 15: Lehman Brothers Holdings files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection; the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history. At prodding of regulators, Bank of America buys Merrill Lynch & Co. for $50 billion.
SEPT. 20: U.S. Treasury Department submits legislation to Congress for the authority to purchase troubled assets.
SEPT. 21: Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley receive permission to become bank holding companies to reduce their financial risk.
SEPT. 25: Washington Mutual Bank becomes biggest-ever U.S. bank failure; JPMorgan Chase acquires its assets.
SEPT. 29: The FDIC agrees to buy the assets of troubled Wachovia Corp., a deal trumped in a matter of days when Wells Fargo says it will by Wachovia without financial assistance from the FDIC.
OCT. 14: The U.S. Treasury announces the Troubled Asset Relief Program to buy capital in financial institutions, eventually making up to $700 billion available.
DEC. 19: U.S. Treasury Department authorizes loans up to $13.4 billion for General Motors and $4 billion for Chrysler from TARP funds.
JAN. 6: Walter Industries shuts down its home-building unit, the well-known Jim Walter Homes, to focus on the coal side of its operations.
JAN. 16: Circuit City closes its remaining 567 U.S. stores, including eight in the bay area.
JAN. 27: State Farm says it will pull out of Florida's property insurance market, dropping 1.2 million policies over the next two years.
FEBRUARY: Florida's pension fund plummets to a low of $86.9 billion, down 37 percent from its high of $138.4 billion in September 2007.
FEB. 25: Tampa Bay area home prices took one of the largest one-month tumbles in history, falling 16 percent from December to January in a flurry of foreclosure sales.
MARCH 2: U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve allow AIG to receive as much as $30 billion of additional capital from the TARP program (while AIG reports a fourth-quarter loss of $61.7 billion and $99 billion loss for all of 2008).
APRIL 3: Walt Disney Co. confirms it has eliminated 1,900 jobs across its U.S. parks division, including 1,400 in Florida.
APRIL 24: Regulators seize control of Eastern Financial Florida Credit Union in Miramar, the biggest federal takeover of a credit union this year.
APRIL 28: General Motors says it will eliminate 1,000 to 1,200 underperforming dealerships.
MAY 13: Continental Airlines confirms it's shutting down its Tampa reservations center, forcing 685 employees into other jobs in the company or out of work.
AUG. 10: Demographers estimate that Florida has lost population year over year for the first time since just after World War II.
AUG. 14: Colonial Bank is seized by regulators and sold to BB&T in the biggest bank failure of the year; the failure comes a week after the collapse of Ocala-based mortgage lender Taylor, Bean & Whitaker.
AUG. 24: Florida's unemployment trust fund runs out of money, begins tapping an emergency federal loan to pay unemployment benefits.
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