User:Jarededelson/sandbox

The article that I read and evaluated is the Financial crisis of 2007-2008 Financial_crisis_of_2007%E2%80%932008

To talk about some strengths, I definitely believe that this article upholds to Wikipedia standards, as all the information is neutral and the information in this article is well documented from credible sources that is cited. The most credible part of this article is that the information is represented in a neutral standpoint. In the financial crisis of 2007-2008 one could easily take a bias standpoint and call the people who were involved in the bad business practices criminals, however this article only explains the causes and effects of the situation. This allows the reader to gain information on the totality of what happened during this time and allows them to critically think for themselves. In addition, all of the facts and information that are used in this article were clearly cited and were credible sources. For example, within this first sentence of the page there are four citations, three of which are from academic journals and one which is from the National Bureau of Economic Research. I think the author of this article did a great job, and presented information in a clear and unbiased way while also using factual and credible sources.

To talk about some weaknesses, I believe that the author of this article could have explained more of the important things that help crash the economy during this time period. For example, when the the author talks about an abundance of credit, low interest rates, the housing bubble, and mortgage backed securities, I would like a more in-depth description of how and why these activities helped contribute to the recession. For the common person who does not know business terms and has not taken a financial class, this article may be difficult to understand at times. One more weakness is that there should be examples of how firms failed and ended up contributing to the market crisis. I feel that if a concrete example of how firms were lending too much, like Lehman Brothers which no longer exists, common people may be able to understand the material better. Overall, this was a great article that was able to describe the very complicated financial crisis we had in 2007-2008. Jarededelson (talk) 18:55, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

For the edits to the article I assigned myself, the first edit that I made was that I felt it was important to add Lehman Brothers debt to equity ratio as a big reason they failed. I used the Harvard Business Review to prove how they were partaking in riskier business practices than the normal bank was doing which left them to fold in the end. The second edit I made was to prove how not many people expected the downturn of the economy and mortgage backed securities. I used an article from Forbes and talked about how the biggest credit rating agencies were rating securities at Triple A when realistically they were very risky.Jarededelson (talk) 15:55, 21 September 2017 (UTC)