Images of a recession
The economic downturn of 2008-09 left vivid pictures
Protestors hold signs behind Richard Fuld, chairman and chief executive officer of Lehman Brothers Holdings, as he takes his seat to testify before U.S. lawmakers Oct. 6, 2008, on the causes and effects of the bank’s bankruptcy.JONATHAN ERNST
Weeds grow in a lot after construction was halted at a 750-home housing development in November, 2008, in Rio Vista, Calif. The northern California city was weighing filing for bankruptcy as it struggled with foreclosures.Justin Sullivan
On the day - Jan. 23, 2009 - on which Britain officially entered the recession, a man makes his way home on Gladstone Road in Liverpool where 99 per cent of the homes are derelict. U.K. figures showed that repossessions were up 50 per cent in the first quarter of the year.Christopher Furlong
A woman throws shoes and boots over a fence outside the General Motors truck assembly plant in Oshawa, Ont., as employees gather for a ceremony on May 14 marking the plant’s closing. Employees threw the boots to signify that they would no longer be needing them once the plant shut.Yvonne Berg
A closed AbitibiBowater saw mill in Mackenzie, B.C., seen here in May. Four month’s earlier, the company shut down everything it owned in the town – two sawmills and a paper mill. The move wiped out 560 jobs.JOHN LEHMANN
Idled container cranes are seen on a pier at the Port Newark Container Terminal in New Jersey in July. The port serving the densely populated Northeastern U.S. is but one of a string of U.S. ports on the Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf coasts whose businesses have been thinned by this recession and a dramatic drop in consumer spending.MIKE SEGAR
A U.S. flag is all that remains inside a closed Levitz furniture store in July in Rohnert Park, Calif., a victim of the recession.Justin Sullivan
Sheryl Nadler
A man pushing a shopping cart walks down a Toronto street holding a “clean sweep” garage sale in May. A new breed of minimalists are cropping up as a result of the economic downturn, people who are taking the recession as an opportunity to re-evaluate their spending choices and doing more with less.J.P. MOCZULSKI
A billboard appears along U.S. Interstate 95 in Rhode Island. The Recession 101 campaign, which started in the state in July, was funded by an anonymous East Coast donor who was despondent about the way the country was reacting to the economy’s tailspin. It’s appearing on over 1,000 billboards across the U.S.Elise Amendola
Bank of Canada Governor Mark CarneySean Kilpatrick