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Business Story Of The Decade: Submit Your Nominations (PHOTOS)

Business Story Of The Decade: Submit Your Nominations (PHOTOS)
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The past decade (2001- 2010) has been defined by business news stories that have jolted us, for better or worse, into the 21st century.

In honor of the new year, we're asking HuffPost readers, what was the most important business news story of the first ten years of the 21st century? Please submit your nominations below, or tweet them using the hashtag #storyofthedecade or email them to submissions@huffingtonpost.com.

We will soon post the most nominated entries, and then you can vote on the story of the decade.

What was the business story of the decade?
Tech Stock Crash(01 of07)
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Nevermind the notorious tech busts like Pets.com, in the early part of this decade it seemed every tech startup went bellyup. Remember Flooz.com? The tech startup that marketed an online currency shoppers could use in lieu of a credit card. Despite the apparent flimsiness of this concept -- and the legal problems with creating a virtual currency -- the business attracted $35 million dollars from investors, but went bankrupt by 2001.Tech companies, like Flooz.com and others, took advantage of favorable venture capital conditions and a blanket ignorance of web commerce to create a speculative bubble of massive proportions. The NASDAQ peaked at 5,048.62 on March 10, 2000.
Enron, WorldCom, Tyco (02 of07)
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Three titans of corporate America -- Enron, WorldCom and Tyco -- which were lauded for years as portraits of capitalist success, fell dramatically from their perches as massive accounting scandals came to light.Enron collapsed, WorldCom re-emerged in another form and Tyco managed to survive, but the three companies now serve as sobering examples of near total management failure. Enron falsified its financial statements to boost its stock price, which tumbled in 2001 when its executives, who perpetrated the fraud, started selling their shares. At Tyco, whose demise came a year later, the CEO was eventually found guilty not only of fraud but also of stealing millions from his company.In a still more alarming case, WorldCom executives committed an $11 billion fraud that brought down the company. At the time, its bankruptcy filing was the biggest in U.S. history.The crimes at Enron, Tyco and WorldCom were seen as symptoms of a larger culture of corporate greed, which culminated in 2008 as a financial crisis froze world markets. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act, passed in 2002 to impose tighter accounting standards, failed to prevent the kind of accounting deceptions that helped lead the world economy to the edge of collapse. (credit:Getty Images)
The Subprime Boom and Foreclosure Crisis(03 of07)
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In the last decade, home prices and homeownership soared to record-breaking highs.What fueled the boom? Working hand-in-hand with pliant regulators, Wall Street took quickly to the high-risk profits in subprime mortgage securitization. (Unfortunately, Wall Street saw little downside to these securities.) By packaging risky mortgages into complex securities that received Triple A ratings from credit rating agencies -- agencies that were paid by the very same clients who created the securities -- Wall Street developed a veritable money machine. But a downturn in the housing market quickly ended Wall Street's housing gold rush. The crash lead to the demise of venerable institutions like Washington Mutual and Lehman Brothers, as well as massive bailouts of Wall Street firms, the near collapse of AIG, and multi-billion dollar cash infusions for mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Worse, the subprime crisis exacted an enormous social toll. Unemployment is still hovering just under 10 percent and the Federal Reserve expects 7.4 million homes to enter foreclosure this year through 2012. (credit:Getty Images)
Financial Crisis(04 of07)
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In 2008, a liquidity crisis in the American banking system, (triggered, in part, by a failing real estate market and explosive derivtives bets) eventually resulted in the failures of several large investment banks as well as insurance agency AIG and mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The result? The financial system was stabilized, but the larger economy languished under high unemployment, weak consumer demand and a vast foreclosure crisis. (credit:Getty Images)
Madoff's arrest(05 of07)
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In 2008, Bernard L. Madoff, CEO of Madoff Investment Securities LLC and former non-executive head of the NASDAQ, was convicted of running the largest Ponzi scheme in American history. All told, Madoff scammed his investors out of approximately $64 billion dollars. (credit:Getty Images)
Financial Reform(06 of07)
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On July 21, 2010 President Obama signed Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act into law -- perhaps the most sweeping reform of the American financial system since the Great Depression. The legislation was a measure to curb the excesses of Wall St, and provide a consumer protection agency to safeguard consumer's rights. Some have criticized the Act, however, for failing to solve the problem of "Too Big To Fail." (credit:Getty Images)
Income Inequality(07 of07)
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Income inequality in the U.S. hit an all-time high during this past decade. This year, the richest 1 percent of Americans now take home almost 24 percent of income. From 1980 to 2005, roughly 80 percent of the total increase in Americans' income went to the top 1 percent.

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