How Failures in Financial Engineering Influenced the Recent Financial Crisis

One of the primary factors that can be attributed as to have led the recent financial crisis is the financial deregulation allowing financial institutions a lot of freedom in the way they operated. The manifestation of this was seen in the form of:

The financial crisis from2007 to 2008 is considered the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1920s and destroyed the U.S. economy severely. It led the housing prices fell 31.8%, the unemployment rate rose a peak of 10% in the United States. Especially the subprime market, began defaulting on their mortgage. Housing industry had collapsed. This crisis was not an accident, it caused by varies of factors. The unregulated securitization system, the US government deregulation, poor monetary policies, the irresponsibility of 3 rating agencies, the massed shadow banking system and so on. From my view, the unregulated private label mortgages securitization is the main contribute factor which led the global financial crisis in 2008.

The passing of the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 repealed the Glass-Steagall Act, and the rescinding of the 1956 Bank Holding Company Act. “The legislation spurred a flood of mergers and acquisitions” by permitting banking, insurance, and securities firms to be affiliated/associated with one another, as a result it became extremely profitable and advantageous for financial institutions to consolidate and diversify their holdings. In doing so a financial firm was capable of offering a multitude of financial products and serviced through one encompassing entity.

Financial crisis is really a major concern for all economies in the world. Every time a crisis occurs, companies, banks and financial institutions should draw their own lessons, because if the lessons are not recognized, they may still go on the trail of failure of

o Weakness: there is a societal imbalance in the distribution of resources, and it is virtually impossible for courts/legislatures to make important decisions that do not make someone worse off

Corporate governance refers to ‘the ways suppliers of finance to corporations assure themselves of getting return on their investment’ (Shleifer and Vishny, 1997: 736). Corporate governance discusses the set of systems, principles and processes by which a

The topic of media bias has been the focus of many conversations in our society recently. I believe that this is a very important topic to discuss because most of the information we are receiving comes from one media outlet or another. More often than not, people will only hear one side of the story because they believe that the news being told to them is the most accurate. In reality, most news stations have their own agendas, resulting in the omission of some truths. These days, media bias can be observed almost everywhere we look. Today, there are many people who immerse themselves in the news that they are being told, so much so, that they believe nothing else. People are often so entrenched in their beliefs, it keeps people from being open

Reviewing current medication use is imperative at each visit. D.E. could have added or discontinued medications with or without her health care providers’ instruction. Asking whether or not D.E. needed to refill current medications could promote medication adherence. D.E. took Simvastatin for hyperlipidemia and Ventolin for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). While reviewing the medications and diagnoses, checking labs were also imperative to ensure D.E.’s lipid level was under control. Food, drug, and environmental allergies were reviewed for accuracy.

The collapse of Lehman Brothers, a sprawling global bank, in September 2008 almost brought down the world’s financial system. Considered by many economists to have been the worst financial crisis since the Great depression of the 1930s. Economist Peter Morici coined the term the “The Great Recession” to describe the period. While the causes are still being debated, many ramifications are clear and include the failure of major corporations, large declines in asset values (some estimates put the drop in the trillions of dollars range), substantial government intervention across the globe, and a significant decline in economic activity. Both regulatory and market based solutions have been proposed or executed to attempt to combat the causes and effects of the crisis.

Corporate governance in itself has no single definition but common principles which it should follow. For example in 1994 the most agreed term for corporate governance was “the process of supervision and control intended to ensure that the company’s management acts in accordance with the interest of shareholders” (Parkinson, 1994)1. Corporate governance code is not a direct set of rules but a self-regulated framework which businesses choose to follow. This code has continued to change in the past 20 years in accordance with what is happening in the business world. For example the Enron scandal caused reform in corporate governance with the Higgs Report which corrected the issues which were necessary. Although it does not quickly fix problems, it gives a better framework to

Health care is a major issue in the United States. In a country that use to be one of the richest in the world, one would think the health care coverage would be top notch. However, according to The Commonwealth Fund, health care in the US ranks last when compared to ten other nations (Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom) (Davis). The privatization of health care has limited many Americans to have access to it and should be a violation to a person’s constitutional right for the pursuit of happiness. If one cannot simply afford health care they are being denied their right to happiness.

The purpose of this paper is to show that the “regulatory capture” has played a role not easily measurable in causing the global financial crisis. To illustrate this, the first step will to describe the “regulatory capture” in its three possible qualifications; then, I will explain, providing some examples, how each of these categories played a possible role in posing the basis for the financial crisis. While illustrating the different forms of capture I will present some questions that leave space to different answers. Finally, I will conclude that the regulatory capture have surely played a role in generating the crisis, but it is not possible to evaluate the effective role it had in causing it.

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.

The most prominent and possibly the most notable market crash is the ‘Global Financial Crisis’ which was a direct repercussion of the neo-liberal policies which were implemented at the time and for which many of today’s global economic problems has stem from. These policies predominately include the replacement of government functions and services with profit-seeking entities, or more commonly known as privatisation and most importantly the deregulation of the economic market (Beder, 2006). Due to the deregulation, financial institutions and other economic players were able to invest in more complex financial markets which were beyond their understanding and a result a market crash occurred and the detrimental effects were widespread. If regulation had been put in place to monitor investment activity then it has been argued that the Global Financial Crisis would not have occurred and the associated global economic problems we are experiencing today would not have eventuated (Dag Einar Thorsen, 2013). As neoliberal policies where implemented around the world casing the global financial crisis the world disparities in wealth and income increased as well as poverty, contradicting neoliberal theories that by increasing the wealth at the top everyone becomes better off.

In early developmental stage of economy FI’s are more influential in exerting corporate governance as compared to the markets (Levine, 2002). Firms mostly rely on internal funding sources but prefer to seek banks for capital financing rather than markets and therefore banks gain an advantage to exert corporate governance over borrowers (Gorton and Winton, 2002).