Before 2007, had you ever heard of subprime mortgages, CDOs, or credit default swaps? In 2007, possibly the worst financial crisis in United States' history began. Through 2008 and 2009 the financial crisis became a global recession. The scale of the financial and economic crisis is measured in tens of trillions of dollars. As this is being written, the economy has slowly begun to recover, but no one is sure if the recovery will be sustained. Hopefully, you are reading this as a history of what happened rather than as a tale of what is going on around you.