Great Recession in the context of "Occupy Wall Street"

Tourism is travel for pleasure, and the commercial activity of providing and supporting such travel. UN Tourism defines tourism more generally, in terms which go "beyond the common perception of tourism as being limited to holiday activity only", as people "travelling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure and not less than 24 hours, business and other purposes". Tourism can be domestic (within the traveller's own country) or international. International tourism has both incoming and outgoing implications on a country's balance of payments.

Between the second half of 2008 and the end of 2009, tourism numbers declined due to a severe economic slowdown (see Great Recession) and the outbreak of the 2009 H1N1 influenza virus. These numbers, however, recovered until the COVID-19 pandemic put an abrupt end to the growth. The United Nations World Tourism Organization has estimated that global international tourist arrivals might have decreased by 58% to 78% in 2020, leading to a potential loss of US$0.9–1.2 trillion in international tourism receipts.

West Bromwich (/ˈbrɒmɪtʃ/ BROM-itch), commonly known as West Brom, is a market town in the borough of Sandwell, in the county of the West Midlands, England. Historically part of Staffordshire, it is 7 miles (11 kilometres) northwest of Birmingham. West Bromwich is part of the area known as the Black Country, in terms of geography, cultures and dialect. West Bromwich had a population of 103,112 in the 2021 Census.

Initially a rural village, West Bromwich's growth corresponded with that of the Industrial Revolution, owing to the area's natural richness in ironstone and coal, as well as its proximity to canals and railway branches. It led to the town becoming a centre for coal mining, brick making, the iron industry and metal trades such as nails, springs and guns. The town's primary economy developed into the engineering, manufacturing and the automotive industry through the early 20th century. During the Second World War, West Bromwich experienced bombing from the German Luftwaffe. It also suffered heavily during recessions in the mid 1970s, early 1980s and late 2000s.

Right-wing populism, also called national populism and right populism, is a political ideology that combines right-wing politics with populist rhetoric and themes. Its rhetoric employs anti-elitist sentiments, opposition to the Establishment, and speaking to or for the common people. Recurring themes of right-wing populists include neo-nationalism, social conservatism, economic nationalism and fiscal conservatism. Frequently they aim to defend a national culture, identity and economy against perceived attacks by outsiders.

Right-wing populism has associations with authoritarianism, while some far-right populists draw comparisons to fascism. Right-wing populism in the Western world is sometimes associated with ideologies such as anti-environmentalism, anti-globalisation, nativism, and protectionism. In Europe the term is often used to describe groups, politicians and political parties generally known for their opposition to immigration, and for Euroscepticism. Some right-wing populists may support expanding the welfare state, but only for those they deem fit to receive it; this concept has been referred to as "welfare chauvinism". Since the Great Recession, European right-wing populist movements began to grow in popularity, in large part due to increasing opposition to immigration from the Middle East and Africa, rising Euroscepticism and discontent with the economic policies of the European Union.

In economic policy, austerity is a set of political-economic policies that aim to reduce government budget deficits through spending cuts, tax increases, or a combination of both. There are three primary types of austerity measures: higher taxes to fund spending, raising taxes while cutting spending, and lower taxes and lower government spending. Austerity measures are often used by governments that find it difficult to borrow or meet their existing obligations to pay back loans. The measures are meant to reduce the budget deficit by bringing government revenues closer to expenditures. Proponents of these measures state that this reduces the amount of borrowing required and may also demonstrate a government's fiscal discipline to creditors and credit rating agencies and make borrowing easier and cheaper as a result.

In most macroeconomic models, austerity policies which reduce government spending lead to increased unemployment in the short term. These reductions in employment usually occur directly in the public sector and indirectly in the private sector. Where austerity policies are enacted using tax increases, these can reduce consumption by cutting household disposable income. Reduced government spending can reduce gross domestic product (GDP) growth in the short term as government expenditure is itself a component of GDP. In the longer term, reduced government spending can reduce GDP growth if, for example, cuts to education spending leave a country's workforce less able to do high-skilled jobs or if cuts to infrastructure investment impose greater costs on business than they saved through lower taxes. In both cases, if reduced government spending leads to reduced GDP growth, austerity may lead to a higher debt-to-GDP ratio than the alternative of the government running a higher budget deficit. In the aftermath of the Great Recession, austerity measures in many European countries were followed by rising unemployment and slower GDP growth. The result was increased debt-to-GDP ratios despite reductions in budget deficits.

The global financial system is the worldwide framework of legal agreements, institutions, and both formal and informal economic action that together facilitate international flows of financial capital for purposes of investment and trade financing. Since emerging in the late 19th century during the first modern wave of economic globalization, its evolution is marked by the establishment of central banks, multilateral treaties, and intergovernmental organizations aimed at improving the transparency, regulation, and effectiveness of international markets. In the late 1800s, world migration and communication technology facilitated unprecedented growth in international trade and investment. At the onset of World War I, trade contracted as foreign exchange markets became paralyzed by money market illiquidity. Countries sought to defend against external shocks with protectionist policies and trade virtually halted by 1933, worsening the effects of the global Great Depression until a series of reciprocal trade agreements slowly reduced tariffs worldwide. Efforts to revamp the international monetary system after World War II improved exchange rate stability, fostering record growth in global finance.

A series of currency devaluations and oil crises in the 1970s led most countries to float their currencies. The world economy became increasingly financially integrated in the 1980s and 1990s due to capital account liberalization and financial deregulation. A series of financial crises in Europe, Asia, and Latin America followed with contagious effects due to greater exposure to volatile capital flows. The 2008 financial crisis, which originated in the United States, quickly propagated among other nations and is recognized as the catalyst for the worldwide Great Recession. A market adjustment to Greece's noncompliance with its monetary union in 2009 ignited a sovereign debt crisis among European nations known as the Eurozone crisis. The history of international finance shows a U-shaped pattern in international capital flows: high prior to 1914 and after 1989, but lower in between. The volatility of capital flows has been greater since the 1970s than in previous periods.

Miami is the second-most populous city in the U.S. state of Florida, and its metropolitan area, with a population of 6.4 million, is the largest in the state. Miami has the third-largest skyline in the United States, after New York City and Chicago, and the fourth largest in North America. It has over 400 high-rises, 78 of which are taller than 492 feet (150 m), with six more that are topped out. The tallest building in the city is the 85-story Panorama Tower, completed in 2017, which rises 868 feet (265 m) in Miami's Brickell district. The top ten tallest buildings in Florida are located in Miami, and the top twenty are all in the city's metropolitan area.

The first significant tall building in Miami is considered to be the six-story Burdine's Department Store, built in 1912, while the 17-story, Mediterranean Revival Freedom Tower, completed in 1925, is the city's best-known early skyscraper. For much of the 20th century, Miami had a relatively modest skyline compared to other major American cities. Beginning in the mid-1990s, Miami underwent a large residential high-rise boom that transformed its skyline, and expanded it to the Brickell and Edgewater neighborhoods. Development accelerated in the mid-2000s, until the Great Recession brought an end to the boom. The skyscraper boom resumed in the mid-2010s, owing to the city's continued population growth and investment, with Miami overtaking Houston as the city with the largest skyline in the southern United States, and has continued into the 2020s.

The 2008 financial crisis, also known as the global financial crisis (GFC) or the Panic of 2008, was a major worldwide financial crisis centered in the United States. The causes included excessive speculation on property values by both homeowners and financial institutions, leading to the 2000s United States housing bubble. This was exacerbated by predatory lending for subprime mortgages and by deficiencies in regulation. Cash out refinancings had fueled an increase in consumption that could no longer be sustained when home prices declined. The first phase of the crisis was the subprime mortgage crisis, which began in early 2007, as mortgage-backed securities (MBS) tied to U.S. real estate, and a vast web of derivatives linked to those MBS, collapsed in value. A liquidity crisis spread to global institutions by mid-2007 and climaxed with the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in September 2008, which triggered a stock market crash and bank runs in several countries. The crisis exacerbated the Great Recession, a global recession that began in mid-2007, as well as the United States bear market of 2007–2009. It was also a contributor to the 2008–2011 Icelandic financial crisis and the euro area crisis.

During the 1990s, the U.S. Congress had passed legislation that intended to expand affordable housing through looser financing rules, and in 1999, parts of the 1933 Banking Act (Glass–Steagall Act) were repealed, enabling institutions to mix low-risk operations, such as commercial banking and insurance, with higher-risk operations such as investment banking and proprietary trading. As the Federal Reserve ("Fed") lowered the federal funds rate from 2000 to 2003, institutions increasingly targeted low-income homebuyers, largely belonging to racial minorities, with high-risk loans; this development went unattended by regulators. As interest rates rose from 2004 to 2006, the cost of mortgages rose and the demand for housing fell; in early 2007, as more U.S. subprime mortgage holders began defaulting on their repayments, lenders went bankrupt, culminating in the bankruptcy of New Century Financial in April. As demand and prices continued to fall, the financial contagion spread to global credit markets by August 2007, and central banks began injecting liquidity. In March 2008, Bear Stearns, the fifth-largest U.S. investment bank, was sold to JPMorgan Chase in a "fire sale" backed by Fed financing.

The economy of Hungary is a developing, high-income mixed economy that is the 53rd-largest economy in the world (out of 188 countries measured by IMF) with $265.037 billion annual output, and ranks 41st in the world in terms of GDP per capita measured by purchasing power parity. Hungary has a very high human development index and a skilled labour force, with the 22nd lowest income inequality by Gini index in the world. Hungary has an export-oriented market economy with a heavy emphasis on foreign trade; thus the country is the 35th largest export economy in the world. The country had more than $100 billion of exports in 2015, with a high trade surplus of $9.003 billion, of which 79% went to the European Union (EU) and 21% was extra-EU trade. Hungary's productive capacity is more than 80% privately owned, with 39.1% overall taxation, which funds the country's welfare economy. On the expenditure side, household consumption is the main component of GDP and accounts for 50% of its total, followed by gross fixed capital formation with 22% and government expenditure with 20%.

In 2015 Hungary attracted $119.8 billion in FDI and invested more than $50 billion abroad. As of 2015, the key trading partners of Hungary were Germany, Austria, Romania, Slovakia, France, Italy, Poland and the Czech Republic. Major industries include food processing, pharmaceuticals, motor vehicles, information technology, chemicals, metallurgy, machinery, electrical goods, and tourism (in 2014 Hungary received 12.1 million international tourists). Hungary is the largest electronics producer in Central and Eastern Europe. Electronics manufacturing and research are among the main drivers of innovation and economic growth in the country. In the past 20 years Hungary has also grown into a major center for mobile technology, information security, and related hardware research.The employment rate in the economy was 68.7% in January 2017, while the employment structure shows the characteristics of post-industrial economies. An estimated 63.2% of the employed workforce work in the service sector, industry contributed by 29.7%, while agriculture employed 7.1%. The unemployment rate was 3.8% in September–November 2017, down from 11% during the Great Recession. Hungary is part of the European single market, which represents more than 448 million consumers. Several domestic commercial policies are determined by agreements among European Union members and by EU legislation.