Concepts of Microeconomics in a UK-Based Organization: Barclays Case Analysis

The main cause of the mortgage crisis is the changes in policy for the mortgage industry. In the past, a fixed mortgage was the prime form of lending. All mortgages have the same payments for the mortgage duration and a large down payment was essential. The calculation of the mortgage was based on the initial amount borrowed, and house assessment rather than the rising value of the income and the house over the years.

A few years later the market took a turn for the worse, where interest rates were on the rise, and homes were losing their value quickly. Now borrowers that were in these interest only ARM’s needed to refinance these loans because the rates were going up, to a point where the homeowner was not be able to afford the payment. The Federal Reserve tried to stimulate the economy by lowering interest rates during the recession in early 2001, from over 6% in 2000, to a rate just above 1.25% in 2002. These low rates encouraged many Americans to apply for loans for homes that a few years ago they would have not been able to. To encourage the homeownership boom, the Bush administration urged Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to allot more money for low-income borrowers so they could buy their own homes. This resulted in the subprime mortgage

The financial crisis that occurred in 2007-2008 is narrowly related to what happened with the housing market and the foreclosure crisis. In 2006, the housing market peaked due to newly available loans such as interest adjustable loans, interest only loans, and zero down loans for people with low-income jobs. Housing prices were increasing radically and new homeowners were taking out mortgages that they would be unable to pay for in the future, all in order to be able to afford homes with such steep real estate value. By 2007, things began to go downhill. Interest rates had begun to rise steeply, mortgage companies had to file bankruptcy, and banks across the country required bailout funds from the U.S. Treasury in an effort to recover

The 2008 financial crisis had multiple causes but the most outstanding to me is the passing of the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act. This act repealed Glass – Steagall which removed the safeguards that came between commercial and investment banks. It destroyed regulation between the two and gave unprecedented “innovation” which allowed millions of Americans to purchase homes they couldn’t really afford. This created the American housing bubble that eventually popped do to citizens being unable to pay for their new homes. The intial burst of the housing bubble resulted in the foreclosure of 860,000 homes in 2008. Another entity at fault for the recession would be the credit rating companies. They provided the means to the consumers to take out mortgages

The main reason for the crisis was a boom and bust in the housing markets at the same time. Home values rose rapidly during the beginning of the 2000’s. Many homeowners used their homes and other assets to withdraw equity to produce add-ons to the house, such as kitchens, decks, or patios. Once the value of the houses went down, they could not pay off this extra debt. Homes were beginning to be valued at less than what the homeowners owed on them. This period was powered by leverage, securitization, and structured finance. Housing was a hot commodity at that time, and Americans were taking out hefty loans in order to pay for them. There was a rise in self-employment at that time, and borrowing money was very relevant at that time. Adjustable rate mortgages, which provided initial interest rates and low monthly payments were the most common form of loans between 2004 and 2008. The banks were not careful in their securitization of loans, and a lot of loans defaulted. The defaults mainly revolved around the failing of the housing market. At the time, there was low requirements for down payments on houses. Lenders were only asking for approximately 3%, today it is up around 10% (Golub). This allowed for more and more people to put a down payment on a house, who would not be capable of paying the banks back. During this time, there was a dramatic increase in sub-prime lending, which means that the people borrowing the money had lowering credit

The lack of money became so bad in the US, UK, and Ireland, that the government had to bail them out. the realization of all this by the public lead to a complete loss of confidence by consumers and investors all around, this lead to less spending and investing. all this lead up to something called a credit crunch. a credit crunch is a sudden shortage of funds for lending. the credit crunch was driven by the bad handling of loans on mortgages that led to a rise in defaults and sub prime mortgages. these mortgages were in america, but the downturn was able to spread throughout the entire globe. people with poor income and poor credit were getting huge loans for mortgages that they werent able to pay back. a cause for this was probably due to the huge incentive for mortgage brokers to sell mortgages at high prices because that's how they got paid, and that played a huge roll in the rise of mortgage defaults. mortgage broker borrowed money to be able to lend mortgage, the lending was not financed out of savings accounts. for many of these mortgages, there was a 1 to 2 year period of low interest rates, at the end of these periods, interest rates rose dramatically, not allowing people to afford the mortgage

There is no doubt that subprime lending was a major cause of the Recession. It was a tactic used by investment banks in order to get more money from unsuspecting homeowners. However, lenders found out that most of the people who were qualified to have a mortgage already had one. In turn, the lenders had to lower their credit criteria for people to take out a loan on a house. This is how the term subprime lending came to be in the financial world. As a result of subprime lending, the investors were able to make millions off of these mortgages. “ Many American homeowners bought houses they could not afford, signed into mortgage agreements they could not understand or which were misleading and took equity out of homes as if they were cash machines” (Cushman 1).

During the 2008 Great Recession, the financial crisis happened because banks were able to create too much money, way too quickly, and they used it to push up house prices and speculate on financial markets. This was the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression in the 1930s. The bank was giving out money to the people who couldn't pay it back. There were a lot of subprime loans to those people with poor credit history. Subprime mortgages were often sold to families who didn't even qualify for ordinary home loans. They would sell them to the people who couldn't even get loans and then turn around and sell them to the banks. The banks said that "anyone qualifies for loans". These banks often created a lot of fake inflation.

Well how did the Housing crisis happen in the first place? Well what banks were doing was looking for fast short term profits. To get these profits banks had to give out “sub-prime mortgages”. Sub prime mortgages are basically loans given to people who would have a rather hard time paying back the cash. Because of this banks were able to increase interest rates. When the banks raised the interest rates what they did was create a hypothetical bubble that was bound to burst. When this happened banks began to fail.

The cause was the uncontrolled number of sub-prime mortgages that were driven by historically low interest rates that flooded the market. Eventually many of these unsecure mortgages started to default due to the inability of borrowers to pay. Leading to a banking and credit crunch.( Holt J.(2009). A summary of the primary causes of the housing bubble and the resulting credit crisis: a Non-technical

The main lesson we have learned from the collapse is that it was caused because of subprime mortgages. The technological development in FICO scores, implemented in 1989, allowed people with bad credit scores to take out loans. Lenders use FICO scores to figure out who is a good or bad borrower. Since FICO scores do this, the interest rates that an individual receives is based on actual information and not assumptions, this decreases asymmetric assumption. Because of FICO scores, mortgages were then divided into three different groups of people due to FICO scores. Subprime mortgages were the ones that allowed people with bad credit take out mortgages. However, most of these mortgages had teaser rates. This meant that the first

borrowers were now underwater on their mortgages) resulting in bank failures or demands for rescuing (Pollock, 2011). Additionally, unemployment rose and access to credit was limited. In September 2008, government-sponsored secondary mortgage lenders, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, became insolvent resulting in a substantial $5 trillion debt forced onto taxpayers (Pollock, 2011). The housing boom and subsequent bursting of the bubble is considered to be a major factor in the Great Recession (Baker, 2010; Pollock, 2011).

The Global Financial Crisis, also known as The Great Recession, broke out in the United States of America in the middle of 2007 and continued on until 2008. There were many factors that contributed to the cause of The Global Financial Crisis and many effects that emerged, because the impact it had on the financial system. The Global Financial Crisis started because of house market crash in 2007. There were many factors that contributed to the housing market crash in 2007. These factors included: subprime mortgages, the housing bubble, and government policies and regulations. The factors were a result of poor financial investments and high risk gambling, which slumped down interest rates and price of many assets. Government policies and regulations were made in order to attempt to solve the crises that emerged; instead the government policies made backfired and escalated the problem even further.

The main cause of this worldwide economic contraction was the credit crunch in 2007/2008. In the United States, mortgage lenders received incentives to sell mortgages, regardless of the income and credit score of the individual receiving the loan. This lead to an influx of loans being sold that were likely to be defaulted on at a later date. These subprime mortgages proved to be very profitable for the mortgage companies; thus, in order to continue selling these mortgages, they consolidated the debt and sold it to financial intermediaries. Therefore, the loans were no longer being financed through the traditional banking model.

There has been a debate for years on what caused the Financial Crisis in 2008 and if there was one main cause, or a series of unfortunate events that led to the crisis. The crisis began when the market was no longer funding many financial entities. The Federal Reserve then lowered the federal funds rate from 5.25% to almost zero percent in December 2008. The Federal Government realized that this was not enough and decided to bail out Bear Stearns, which inhibited JP Morgan Chase to buy Bear Stearns. Unfortunately Bear Stearns was not the only financial entity that needed saving, Lehman Brothers needed help as well. Lehman Brothers was twice the size of Bear Stearns and the government could not bail them out. Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy on September 15, 2008. Lehman Brothers bankruptcy caused the market tensions to become disastrous. The Fed then had to bail out American International Group the day after Lehman Brothers failed (Poole, 2010). Some blame poor policy making and others blame the government. The main causes of the financial crisis are the deregulation of banks and bank corruption.