The late-2000s recession (or the Great Recession) is an economic recession that began in the United States in December 2007 as determined by the U.S. National Bureau of Economic Research. It spread to much of the industrialized world, and has caused a pronounced deceleration of economic activity. This global recession has been taking place in an economic environment characterized by various imbalances and was sparked by the outbreak of the financial crisis of 2007–2010. Although the late-2000s recession has at times been referred to as "the Great Recession," this same phrase has been used to refer to every recession of the several preceding decades. In July 2009, it was announced that a growing number of economists believed that the recession may have ended. However, in the United States, the requisite two consecutive quarters of growth in the GDP did not actually occur until the end of 2009.

The financial crisis has been linked to reckless lending practices by financial institutions encouraged by the government and the growing trend of securitization of real estate mortgages in the United States. The US mortgage-backed securities, which had risks that were hard to assess, were marketed around the world. A more broad based credit boom fed a global speculative bubble in real estate and equities, which served to reinforce the risky lending practices. The precarious financial situation was made more difficult by a sharp increase in oil and food prices. The emergence of Sub-prime loan losses in 2007 began the crisis and exposed other risky loans and over-inflated asset prices. With loan losses mounting and the fall of Lehman Brothers on September 15, 2008, a major panic broke out on the inter-bank loan market. As share and housing prices declined, many large and well established investment and commercial banks in the United States and Europe suffered huge losses and even faced bankruptcy, resulting in massive public financial assistance.

A global recession has resulted in a sharp drop in international trade, rising unemployment and slumping commodity prices. In December 2008, the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) declared that the United States had been in recession since December 2007. Several economists have predicted that recovery may not appear until 2011 and that the recession will be the worst since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Paul Robin Krugman, who won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics, once commented on this as seemingly the beginning of "a second Great Depression." The conditions leading up to the crisis, characterized by an exorbitant rise in asset prices and associated boom in economic demand, are considered a result of the extended period of easily available credit, inadequate regulation and oversight, or increasing inequality.

The recession has renewed interest in Keynesian economic ideas on how to combat recessionary conditions. Fiscal and monetary policies have been significantly eased to stem the recession and financial risks. Economists advise that the stimulus should be withdrawn as soon as the economies recover enough to "chart a path to sustainable growth".

The onset of the economic crisis took most people by surprise. A 2009 paper identifies twelve economists and commentators who, between 2000 and 2006, predicted a recession based on the collapse of the then-booming housing market in the U.S: Dean Baker, Wynne Godley, Fred Harrison, Michael Hudson, Eric Janszen, Steve Keen, Jakob Brøchner Madsen & Jens Kjaer Sørensen, Kurt Richebächer, Nouriel Roubini, Peter Schiff and Robert Shiller.

Among the various imbalances in which the U.S. monetary policy contributed by excessive money creation, leading to negative household savings and a huge U.S. trade deficit, dollar volatility and public deficits, a focus can be made on the following ones:

The decade of the 2000s saw a global explosion in prices, focused especially in commodities and housing, marking an end to the commodities recession of 1980–2000. In 2008, the prices of many commodities, notably oil and food, rose so high as to cause genuine economic damage, threatening stagflation and a reversal of globalization.

In January 2008, oil prices surpassed $100 a barrel for the first time, the first of many price milestones to be passed in the course of the year. In July 2008, oil peaked at $147.30 a barrel and a gallon of gasoline was more than $4 across most of the U.S.A. The economic contraction in the fourth quarter of 2008 caused a dramatic drop in demand and prices fell below $35 a barrel at the end of the year. Some believe that this oil price spike was the product of Peak Oil.[unreliable source?] There is concern that if the economy was to improve, oil prices might return to pre-recession levels.

The food and fuel crises were both discussed at the 34th G8 summit in July 2008.

Sulfuric acid (an important chemical commodity used in processes such as steel processing, copper production and bioethanol production) increased in price 3.5-fold in less than 1 year while producers of sodium hydroxide have declared force majeure due to flooding, precipitating similarly steep price increases.