U.s. Army War College

Fiscal Reality After the 2008 Financial Crisis U.s. Army War College

This book will examine the effects of the federal government response to the 2008 financial crisis and will explore the likely strategic impacts to the US Army, its operations, and its finances. The crisis originated in America and quickly spread to all corners of the globe. An inflated real estate market fueled by years of easy credit came crashing down in 2008. The financial sector in the US developed numerous exotic instruments that were supposed to be able to spread the risk of credit default across the entire market. It is now obvious that these financial devices were nothing other than a vast speculative tool that enabled the financial sector to achieve unprecedented levels of leverage. In good times, this financial leverage fueled fantastic profits that were used to generate even greater leverage. The bad times, however, are now here and the results from all that financial leverage are losses in the trillions of dollars. The strategic issue now is to determine if the unprecedented federal government reaction to the financial crisis will have an impact on future Army budgets and if so, what can the Army do to position itself to succeed in the new fiscal reality that results.