Deleveraging

In October, 2008, at the height of the financial crisis, he circulated a twenty-page essay immodestly titled “A Template for Understanding What’s Going On,” which said the economy faced not just a common recession but a “deleveraging”—a period in which people cut back on borrowing and rebuild their savings—the impact of which would be felt for a generation.

Because it had studied the nature of deleveragings or depressions, the team knew that deleveragings occur when interest rates go to zero and there's an excessive amount of debt.