Default Risk And The Ways Of Identifying It Essay

The outbreak and spread of the financial crisis of 2007-2008 have caused the most of countries into severe economic difficulties and also created an adverse impact on the global economy. The beginning of the financial crisis is defaults in the subprime mortgage market in the USA. Although the global economy seems to recover since 2009, the impacts of the crisis still affect many countries until now. This essay focuses on the background and impacts of financial crisis, and the learning from the movie The Big Short.

The company’s finance department had the chance to reduce the company’s weight in mortgage-backed securities. However, it chooses not to. The company’s financial adviser did not evaluate any risk that would emerge in the economic sector of the U.S during that year. Furthermore, the company had an opportunity to identify the consequence that would result due to the falling mortgages; somewhat the company neglected this risk and increased in value of portfolio.

Moderate risk. Purchasing a bond means giving a loan to a company. “T-Bonds” are bonds issued by the U.S. Treasury and are safer than corporate bonds. (Loaning money to the government is safer than loaning money to a private business.)

Then, in the 1990s, bonds were created consisting of subprime mortgages, which were higher risk mortgages with high interest rates, made to borrowers with lower credit levels. Essentially, banks were handing out mortgages like candy to consumers who were never going to be able to make the payments, but Wall Street kept buying and packaging the mortgages into bonds. Since these bonds were inherently riskier, one wonders why investors were still willing to buy. Investors, who look at ratings by agencies such as Moodys and Standard & Poors, had no reason to believe these bonds were risky investments. The agencies, whom were being paid by Wall Street, were assigning high ratings to these risky bonds.

Bonds are a debt investment where investors lend money to a company or entity (i.e. government). Some features of a bond are they have a face value, have a maturity date, used to raise funds, some are tax exempt, risk of default if company goes under, and bought for less than maturity value. One example happened in America during World War II when the government started selling war bonds to help fund the war and to help take money out of circulation to help control spending. At the time you could buy a $25 bond for $18.75 that would mature in 10 years. They give a yield of only 2.9%. There are three main categories of bonds 1) corporate, issued by companies 2) municipal bonds,

As the saying goes, history repeats itself. The Great Depression is a time in American history that will always be remembered as a time of hardship in Americans’ lives. The goal: to never have such great oppression exist in the United States again. With the way the economy is headed today, many people are skeptical as to whether history will really repeat itself and create a new Depression. One of the biggest problems in the country today is the foreclosure crisis. Many Americans are living outside of their means or have lost their jobs and are unable to make their mortgage payments. When people can’t make their mortgage payments, they will lose their home and their family will be out on the streets. There are definite changes that need to

Credit risk of bonds has a possibility that the bond issuer will default on the bond. The risk that the bond issuer will default on the bond will mean that the investor’s actual yield will be lower. Other factors that can contribute to the riskiness of bonds are inflation rates and the financial health of the bond issuer.

We all know from our course that leverage and liquidity risks of financial institutions are vulnerable to the crisis. The financial crisis that emerged in 2007 had many and varied causes, but one of its most

This case raises many interesting questions concerning the record setting issuance of corporate debt by WorldCom, Inc. (“WorldCom”). Both the surprisingly voluminous structure of the proposed issuance and the foreboding macro-economic climate in which it was slated spark concerns over the risk and cost of the move. One of the first questions that must be addressed is whether WorldCom’s timing was appropriate. Next, the company’s choice of structure for the bond issuance must be analyzed. Finally, the cost of issuing each tranche of debt must be estimated in order to determine how much WorldCom is actually giving up to achieve the $6 billion in funds.

It provides an evaluation of the bond issuer’s financial strength and ability to pay back the bond’s principle and interest. The bond rating also provides investors with some sense of security when investing in a particular firm. A higher bond rating implies a lower likelihood for the firm to default. Investors would feel more secured investing in such a bond, thus demanding a relatively lower rate of return. As such, high rated bonds enable the issuer to enjoy a lower cost of borrowing. A lower bond rating, on the other hand, serves as a negative signal to investors on the firm’s ability to repay debt obligations.

In relation to the increase in house’s price, the rise of financial agreements such as mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and collateralized debt obligations (CDO) encouraged investors to invest in the U.S housing market (Krugman, 2009). When housing price declined in the U.S, many financial institutions that borrowed and invested in subprime mortgage reported losses. In addition, the fall of housing price resulted in default and foreclosure and that began to exhaust consumer’s wealth and

“First, it neglects the fact that those who benefit may not be the same as those who pay the costs.

Along with the many different characteristics of bonds such as, the way the pay their interest, the market they are issued in, the currency they are payable in, protective features and their legal status. Bond issuers may be governments, corporations, special purpose trusts or even non-profit organizations. Usually it is the type of issuer or the particular nature of a bond that sets it apart in its own category.

This chapter is about the background of 2007-2008 financial crisis. The 2007-2008 financial crisis has a huge impact on US banking system and how the banks operate and how they are regulated after the financial turmoil. This financial crisis started with difficulty of rolling over asset backed commercial papers in the summer of 2007 due to uncertainty on the liquidity of mortgage backed securities and questions about the soundness of banks and non-bank financial institutes when interest rate continued to go up at a faster pace since 2004. In March 2008 the second wave of liquidity loss occurred after US government decided to bailout Bear Stearns and some commercial banks, then other financial institutions took it as a warning of financial difficulty of their peers. In the meantime banks started hoarding cash and reserve instead of lending out to fellow banks and corporations. The third wave of credit crunch which eventually brought down US financial system and spread over the globe was Lehman Brother’s bankruptcy in August 2008. Many major commercial banks in US held structured products and commercial papers of Lehman Brother, as a result, they suffered a great loss as Lehman Brother went into insolvency. This panic of bank insolvency caused loss of liquidity in both commercial paper market and inter-bank market. Still banks were reluctant to turn to US government or Federal Reserve as this kind of action might indicate delicacy of

In this essay, we are trying to look at the factors responsible for the global financial crisis in 2008-09 which started in US and later spread across the world. By now, a lot of studies have been done on the global financial crisis of 2008. We explain briefly the role of the financial engineering which leads to combination of various financial securities, the actual risk of which is not clearly assessed and hence leading to the financial crisis. There were also some serious lapses in regulation and failure of the rating agencies in assessing the risks assumed by the financial products which accentuated the crisis.