What is the economic basis of consumer culture? An economic crisis is mainly due to the slowdown of the economic activities of the different countries. Since 2007, a financial and economic crisis has affected the world. This crisis started in the United States to spread later to other world economies. We have to witness to a high indebtedness in United States (Financial Time, 21.10.09, p.13: a crisis in search of a narrative). At first we will see the historic context of the financial and economic crisis by reminding the causes of the start of this one, as well as its current state. Is the crisis still present? What are the means used to fight against this crisis? Then we will focus on the effects of the crisis on business and finally we will look at its effects on consumer behaviour. People like to buy safe investments; the mortgages are loans that are generally safe. Banks realized that they could make a lot of money by gathering mortgages in ‘goods’, they could then sell them with no risk, the risks going to the buyer of the ‘good’. Lots of people and companies wanted to buy it , but there was not anymore mortgage of quality available to make a 'good'. Therefore banks have granted mortgages to poorer people, who then could not pay off these loans. Banks played the innocents while they had sold loans very risky. To guarantee the purchase value of the loans, they bought insurances. “But the banks took out insurance between them”. An evaluation is needed to identify the risks that we take with these investments. This assessment (evaluation) is made by rating agencies, in United States, these agencies cannot be legally considered responsible for the quality of their evaluation. Their objective is to satisfy the customer i.e. the banks. Moreover, the regulation is not adapted and there were regulatory regimes that perversely encouraged banks to off-load debt and thus took less attention to the risks (FT, 21.10.09, p.13: a crisis in search of a