Another black swan event occurred in the fall of 2008 with the global financial crisis,
which shook the entire free-market system to its core.18 A real estate bubble had developed
in the United States, fueled by cheap credit and the availability of subprime mortgages.
When that bubble burst, many entities faced financial stress or bankruptcy—those who
had unsustainable mortgages, investors holding securities based on those mortgages, and
the financial institutions that had sold the securities