The 2007-2008 Financial Crisis: Causes, Impacts and the Need for New Regulations

The crisis that stressed lots of economies and financial systems originated in US mortgage lending markets. First signals of possible problems came in early 2007, when the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation announced about its inability of purchasing high-risk mortgages, after what New Century Financial Corporation - a leading mortgage lender to riskier customers - filed for bankruptcy (John Marshall, 2009). In the research paper of 2009 he claims that source of the crisis emanated from the rise of house pricing, called housing bubble. “US house prices rose dramatically from 1998 until late 2005, more than doubling over this period, and far faster than average wages. Further support for the existence of a bubble came from the ratio of house prices to renting costs which rocketed upwards around 1999..” (John Marshall, 2009, p 10). Housing bubble was also fully analyzed by Dean Baker in his research “The housing Bubble and the financial crisis” in 2008. Dean noticed that, by the middle of 2007, house prices had peaked and began to head downward.

The financial crisis of 2007-2009 resulted from a variety of external factors and market incentives, in combination with the housing price bubble in the United States. When high levels of bank and consumer leverage appeared, rising consumption caused increasingly risky lending, shown in the laxity in the standard of securities ' screening and riskier mortgages. As a consequence, the high default rate of these risky subprime mortgages incurred the burst of the housing bubble and increased defaults. Finally, liquidity rapidly shrank in the United States, giving rise to the financial crisis which later spread worldwide (Thakor, 2015). However, in the beginning of the era in which this chain of events took place, deregulation was widely practiced, as the regulations and restrictions of the economic and business markets were regarded as barriers to further development (Orhangazi, 2014). Expanded deregulation primarily influenced the factors leading to the crisis. The aim of this paper is to discuss whether or not deregulation was the main underlying reason for the 2007/08 financial crisis. I will argue that deregulation was the underlying cause due to the fact that the most important origins of the crisis — the explosion of financial innovation, leverage, securitisation, shadow banking and human greed — were based on deregulation. My argument is presented in three stages. The first section examines deregulation policies which resulted in the expansion of financial innovation and

June 13, 2007 is the day that Richard C. Cook claims in his article, “It’s Official: The Crash of the U.S. Economy Has Begun.” In the past couple of years, months, and weeks, the United States economy and stock market showed significant failures and inefficiencies to the world. Perhaps the greatest evidence signaling the recent economic meltdown is the subprime mortgage problems that started a little over a year ago. The burst of the U.S. housing market bubble was caused by a combination of risky lending and borrowing practices and higher interest rates coupled with dropping housing prices, making refinancing more difficult. To deepen the drama, Wall Street’s excessive debt and unsustainable

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.

An excess of regulation, rather than an insufficiency of it, was the principal cause of the recent credit crunch.

“Many people still attribute the financial crisis of 2008 to greed, Wall Street, and free-market capitalism, even though the real-cause has yet to be acknowledged, let alone curbed or removed was government intervention in markets” (www.forbes.com). This included the Federal Reserve’s disruptive manipulations of interest rates, plus massive subsidies and regulations in housing, banking, and mortgages. For years government policy promoted reckless financial practices and then made things worse by bailing out the worst miscreants. Policy priority and favoritism went to those most in need of homes they could not afford and in need of loans they could not repay. This act seems noble, but in reality it was not. Many families were destroyed and homeless

The 2008 financial crisis should not be the last one readers will experience, but this paper would like to present a picture of how it unfolded and where went wrong, so that hopefully we can learn from it. This paper will address some post-crisis regulations and why regulators responded this way. It concludes that the key is to carry out reforms addressing the moral hazard issue deeply in our current financial system.

The Financial Crisis of 2008 became an experience that the American people will not forget any time very soon. The country took a direct hit to the financial sector during the crisis due to several changes that had taken place. Banks and financial investment companies were two of the many types of businesses that suffered. The consumers began to be fearful when it came to working with banks and financial investment companies. As a result of the crisis, new regulations were put in place to keep everything regulated. The regulations of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act were made to monitor and track the financial firms and enforce regulations to keep from

Since I’m not a very creative person when it comes to school projects. I decided for my project that I was going to right a research paper about the 2008 financial crisis which I think was huge turning point that affected our economy to this very day. I put a lot of effort into this research appear since my test grades have been not up to par so I really hope you enjoy!

Previously stated, the federal funds rate was cut to as low as 1% during the early 2000’s. Not only did this turn investors away from investing in treasury bonds, but it also cheapened the cost of borrowing money for banks. This spurred action on behalf of financial institutions to offer investments connected to the continually increasing, and seemingly risk-free, housing market. Due to a combination of greed and ignorance on behalf of financial institutions and credit rating agencies, the proverbial housing bubble increased until it finally reached its peak in 2006, and then began to burst at the end of that year and on into 2007. What exacerbated the decline to such a high degree was the strong connectivity of the financial institutions through their complex transactions that related to mortgages. The main factors that were involved in the impending crash were the increased offering of subprime mortgage loans and collateralized debt obligations, or CDOs. Critically analyzing the effects of these products will aid in the conversation of financial institutions role in sparking The Great Recession.

The most popularly known subprime mortgage crisis came into lime light when a steep rise in home foreclosures in 2006 spiraled seemingly out of control in 2007, triggering a national financial crisis that went global within the year. The maximum blame is pointed at the lenders who created such problems. It was the lenders who ultimately lent funds to people with poor credit and a high risk of default. When Fed flooded the markets with increasing capital liquidity, its intention was not only to lower interest rates but it also broadly depressed risk premiums as investors sought riskier opportunities to bolster their investment returns. At that point of time, lenders found themselves loaded with capital for lending out and higher willingness to undertake higher risks in a surge to get greater investment returns. To overcome of the financial instability and housing price bubbles, Federal Reserve has to intervene to combat these issues.

In the summer of 2007 the economy was overheating. This occurred because a large number of financial institutions had underwritten and invested in subprime mortgages. These are home loans that were marketed to buyers who cannot qualify for traditional mortgages. This is from some kind of issues they are having with their credit, income or the down payment. What made these assets so risky is the interest rate could be reset higher. This increased the chances that a wave of foreclosures could hit the markets at the same time (from owners who could not afford the payments). To make matter worse, a number of banks had invested a large percentage of depositor funds into these securities. (Addo, 2010) (Elul, 2008)

The 2007-08 financial crisis that started in the US is often dubbed as the housing bubble. Although, the burst of the housing bubble is the tipping point of the crisis, the true causes have building up slowly and steadily for almost over a decade. The burst of the housing bubble was merely a reflection of the built up baggage. This crisis is a classic example of how dangerous derivatives can turn out to be if not properly managed.

Housing prices in the United States rose steadily after the World War II. Although some research indicated that the financial crisis started in the US housing market, the main cause of the financial crisis between 2007 and 2009 was actually the combination of housing bubble and credit boom. The banks created so much loan that pushed the housing price to the peak. As the bank lend out a huge amount of money, the level of individual debt also rose along with the housing price. Since the debt rose faster than people’s income, people were unable to repay their loan and bank found themselves were in danger. As this showed a signal for people, people withdrew money from the banks they considered as “safe” before, and increased the “haircuts” on repos and difficulties experienced by commercial paper issuers. This caused the short term funding market in the shadow banking system appeared a

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