preview

Inside Job Analysis

Decent Essays

Identify and discuss the interrelationships among the key factors highlighted in the global financial crisis “Inside Job” has identified two main themes that have been typically responsible for the financial crisis of 2008. Firstly, extensive deregulation since 1980s has been largely responsible. Secondly, the academia has played a pivotal role in legitimizing deregulation and has hence been indirectly, if not directly, responsible for the one of history’s biggest financial meltdowns. As far as deregulation is concerned, it affected the global financial system in a very complex and intriguing way largely through derivatives. Derivatives, as the world was unfortunate to discover, were the brainchild of the top executives of Investment …show more content…

Even sub-prime loans were combined to create CDOs and were sold heavily to investors worldwide primarily because these sub-prime loans carry high interest rates for investment banks. Through extensive loans that were not adjusted for risk, a bubble was created as demand sky-rocketed driving up prices of markets such as that of real estate and when CDOs went bad, which they were bound to, the global financial system choked. Additionally, during the bubble, investment banks were borrowing heavily to raise more loans to combine them to create CDOs and owing to deregulation, the leverage ratio of investment banks went up to an astounding figure of 33 to 1! It is quite important to understand the role of another market created by CDOs, that of Credit Default Swaps (CDS). CDS were derivatives sold by insurance companies to investors who owned CDOs so that if a CDO went bad, insurance companies would compensate for the losses of the investor in return for premiums paid by investors to insurance companies. Moreover, speculators which included investment banks could also buy CDS to bet against CDOs they did not own. Since CDS market was unregulated, insurance companies did not keep reserves to cover potential losses. Hence, when CDOs failed, insurance companies were caught on the hook and went

Get Access