Subprime Mortgage Crisis - a Case Study on Morgan Stanley

In the movie the big short, Lewis Ranieri, who is a banker of the Wall Street, created an idea that companies packed thousands of mortgage all bundled together to sell, which is the AAA credit-rating bond, and can obtain high yields with low risk because everyone should pay for their mortgage. The concept of Lewis Ranieri is called mortgage-backed securities (MBS). However, the demand of buying MBS is more than MBS supply. Therefore, when the risk of MBS is high, Collateralized Debt Obligation (CDO) is a way to change subprime loans to high- rating bonds and it can be sold again. Although CDO is full of subprime loans, it still can get AAA rating because

The private label mortgage securitization collected a series of assets – most of them are high-yield junk bonds, mortgage securities, credit-default swap with varying degrees of risk. The securitization of subprime mortgages was attractive to investors due to high interest rates and high return features. More and more financial institutions started to sell private label mortgage securitization, including banks, insurance companies and so on. In 2006, the CDO market ranged from $0.5 trillion to $2 trillion (boundless. Com). Also, by 2007, about 70% of subprime borrowers used hybrid adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs).

Since mid 1990s, the subprime mortgage market has grown rapidly experiencing a phenomenal 23% compound annual growth rate to 2006. The total subprime loan originations increased from $65 billion in 1995 to $613 billion in 2006. The subprime sector has become a significant sub-sector of the total residential market accounting for 21% of all residential mortgage originations in 2006. Similarly, by year-end 2006, total outstanding balance of subprime loans grew to $1.2 trillion, approximately 12.6% of all outstanding mortgage debt.

In the 1980s, investments banks such as Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Bear Stearns, JP Morgan, and Morgan Stanley started selling mortgage bonds. Mortgage bonds were a collection of thousands of home mortgages, purchased from lenders, and their associated income streams (monthly payment). To address the fact that some homeowners often refinance their debt when interest rates are low which prematurely pays off the debt, mortgage bonds were stacked into layers called ‘tranches’. The lowest tranche represented mortgages to be paid off early, and the highest layer was the last mortgages to be paid off.

The beginning of the crisis: From the early to the mid-2000’s, high-risk mortgages became available from lenders who funded mortgages by repackaging them into pools that were sold to investors. New financial products were used to apportion these risks, with private-label mortgage-backed securities providing most of the funding of subprime mortgages. The less

In 2008 the United States experienced the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression in the 1930s, primarily because of the bursting of the U.S. housing bubble and increasing default rates on subprime mortgages which caused the price of house to increase once a high amount of loans were given out by banks to potential homeowners. Securitization played a big role in this because of how risky the regulations are and the giant corporate companies that are truly fluctuating and controlling the market. At the peak of the financial crisis new specialized mortgage lenders and securitizers came along unrestricted by government regulations which resulted in an extreme number of foreclosures and the stock market to plummet.

Now these financial markets have allowed many to become successful and live the “American Dream,” but have also caused many to suffer and lose everything. Back in 2007, the United States’ economy experienced a large financial crisis that almost paralleled the financial crisis during the Great Depression. Large financial institutions suffered a great deal and the stock market plummeted worldwide. The housing market took a huge hit as well, causing many foreclosures and evictions. This crisis stemmed from a major default in the subprime mortgage market. The bad credit records should have given some forewarning to the looming crisis, but the financial innovation for these mortgages gave investors a chance to succeed in the market. So as a large volume of cash flowed into the United States, the subprime mortgage market took off and became a trillion dollar market by 2007 (Mishkin 208). With prices rising in the housing market, subprime borrowers could simply refinance their houses by taking out even larger loans as homes appreciated in value. These borrowers were also unlikely to default because the houses could be sold off to pay back the loan. This benefited investors since the securities backed by cash flows from subprime mortgages had high returns. And this continued growth of the subprime mortgage market further increased the demand for houses and continued to fuel the increase in housing prices.

Jaffee, D. The U.S. Subprime Mortgage Crisis: Issues Raised and Lessons Learned. [online] World Bank. Available at: http://www-wds.worldbank.org/exter

A CDO is created when mortgage loans are grouped together, divided by risk, and sold to investors from the banks that hold them. The banks, when doing so, pass the risk of a loan defaulting onto the investor. However, they do not make as much money on the loan, as the investor has to make their profit as well (Kiviat 30). These CDO’s initially appeared as a sound investment, but when the demand for CDO’s exceeded supply for investment, artificial CDOs were created by dividing up other CDOs. This allowed people to be deceitful of the quality of their investments. Investments are rated on a scale from AAA to A and BBB to B, with AAA being the least risky, and B being the most. What these artificial CDOs did was carefully chop up grade BBB or even grade BB legitimate CDOs and repackaged as AAA investments even though they contained things like subprime mortgages and no documentation loans in the mix (Kiviat 30). Because some holding groups invested heavily in CDOs, losses in the subprime market caused hedge funds to become nearly worthless. One of the hardest hit companies was BearStearns, who had two hedge funds go from over $1.5 billion to practically nothing (Kiviat 30).The artificial CDOs created by greed on Wall St. has also caused international banks, like BNP Paribas SA, France’s biggest bank to freeze funds because the bank couldn’t “ ‘fairly’ value their holdings after

In the early-2000s, Moody’s, one of the leading credit rating agencies in the world, evaluated thousands of bonds backed by so-called “subprime” residential mortgages—home loans made to those with both low incomes and poor credit scores. When housing prices began to fall in 2006, the value of these bonds disintegrated, and Moody’s was compelled to downgrade them significantly. In late 2008, several commercial banks, investment banks, and mortgage lenders that had been

This almost brought down the world’s financial system, and threatened the collapse some of the large financial institutions. Which luckily was prevented by the bailout of banks by national governments, but left the stock markets to fend for themselves, thus causing global drop. It took huge taxpayer-financed bailouts to shore up the industry. Even so, the ensuing credit crunch turned what was already a bad turn out into the worst recession in 80 years. In 2008 the world economy faced its most dangerous crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The contagion, which began in 2007 when sky-high home prices in the United States finally turned decisively downward, spread quickly, first to the entire U.S. financial sector and then to financial markets overseas. The American economy is built on credit, and because of this credit went unchecked and got out of control. Many people were taking out loans, mortgages became simple. Many people got rich and wanted more. Banks made a cut on the sale, then packaged the mortgage with a group of other mortgages and erased all personal responsibility of the loans. The housing market eventually declined, causing massive losses in mortgage backed securities. Many banks and investment firms began losing money. This also caused a massive amount of homes on the market which lowered housing prices and slowed

Corporate bonds are one of the main products of the fixed income market. These instruments have similar features that of a bank loan, except that they can be transferrable from one lender (investor) to another, and can be traded in market which is known as corporate bond market. Trading is performed either on price or yield basis. Bond usually trades either at premium or at discount to its face value. The quality of the bond is derived from creditworthiness of the company or default risk. Based on potential default risk, bonds are evaluated on credit rating

The housing market crash, which broke out in the United States in 2007, was caused by high risk subprime mortgages. The subprime mortgage crisis resulted in a sudden reduction in money and credit availability from banks and other lending institutions, which was referred to as a “credit crunch.” The “credit crunch” and its effect spread across the United States and further on to other countries across the world. The “credit crunch” caused a collapse in the housing markets, stock markets and major financial institutions across the globe.

Collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) refers to a kind of innovative derivative securities product which simply bundling mortgage debt, bonds, loans and other assets together and then rearranging these assets into different tranches with different credit ratings, interest rate payments, risks, and priority of repayment to meet the needs of different investors. As borrowers began to default, investors in the inferior tranche of the CDOs took the first hit, so the owner of this tranche of CDOs may be riskier. In order to compensate for the higher risk, the subordinate tranche receives higher rate of return while the superior tranche receives lower rate but still nice return. To make the top even safer, the banks ensured it small fee called the credit default swap (CDS). The banks do all of the works so that creating rating agencies will stamp the top tranche since as a safe, triple A rated

One of the first indications of the late 2000 financial crisis that led to downward spiral known as the “Recession” was the subprime mortgages; known as the “mortgage mess”. A few years earlier the substantial boom of the housing market led to the uprising of mortgage loans. Because interest rates were low, investors took advantage of the low rates to buy homes that they could in return ‘flip’ (reselling) and homeowners bought homes that they typically wouldn’t have been able to afford. High interest rates usually keep people from borrowing money because it limits the amount available to use for an investment. But the creation of the subprime mortgage