The Economic Crisis Of 2008-2009

The mortgage crisis of 2007 marked catastrophe for millions of homeowners who suffered from foreclosure and short sales. Most of the problems involving the foreclosing of families’ homes could boil down to risky borrowing and lending. Lenders were pushed to ensure families would be eligible for a loan, when in previous years the same families would have been deemed too high-risk to obtain any kind of loan. With the increase in high-risk families obtaining loans, there was a huge increase in home buyers and subsequently a rapid increase in home prices. As a result, prices peaked and then began falling just as fast as they rose. Soon after families began to default on their mortgages forcing them either into foreclosure or short sales. Who was to blame for the risky lending and borrowing that caused the mortgage meltdown? Many might blame the company Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but in reality the entire system of buying and selling and free market failed home owners and the housing economy.

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 bursting of the housing bubble, known more colloquially as the 2008 mortgage crisis, was preceded by a series of ill-fated circumstances that culminated in what has been considered to be the worst financial downfall since the Great Depression. After experiencing a near-unprecedented increase in housing prices from January 2002 until mid-2006, a phenomenon that was steadily fed by unregulated mortgage practices, the market steadily declined and the prior housing boom subsided as well. When housing prices dropped to about 25 percent below the peak level achieved in 2006 toward the close of 2008, liquidity and capital disappeared from the market.

When the housing bubble came tumbling down, there were high defaults rates on the electorate and this led to the emergence of high risk borrowers (Bianco, 2008). These were people with a questionable financial history and may have lacked the sufficient means to sustain their mortgage payments and hence, went under. This occasioned massive loses to all the players in the housing sector. The worst hit was the lenders and the various investors.

The housing market had started to decline in 2007, after reaching peak prices in 2006. There was an extremely high amount of subprime mortgages that had been issued in the early 2000’s. Homeowners could no longer afford to live in their homes, payments started going to default, and foreclosures started to rise. According to The Washington Post, there were five contributing factors to the housing market crash: low-doc loans, adjustable- rate mortgages, equity line of credit, more money down than needed, and mortgage insurance.

The financial crisis that happened during 2007-09 was considered the worst financial crisis in the world since the great depression in the 1930s. It leads to a series of banking failures and also prolonged recession, which have affected millions of Americans and paralyzed the whole financial system. Although it was happened a long time ago, the side effects are still having implications for the economy now. This has become an enormously common topic among economists, hence it plays an extremely important role in the economy. There are many questions that were asked about the financial crisis, one of the most common question that dragged attention was ’’How did the government (Federal Reserve) contributed to the financial crisis?’’

In 2008 the United States economy faced it most serious economic downturn since the great depression. This crisis began in 2006 when the subprime mortgage market showed an increase in mortgage defaults. This would lead to the decline of the U.S. housing market after a decade of high growth. The problems in the mortgage market where able to spread to other sectors of the economy especially in financial markets because of Collateralized Mortgage Obligations or CMOs. CMOs where mortgage backed securities that where given out by investment banks and where not regulated by the government. These securities fell as did mortgages due to increasing default rates. Because of CMOs companies bought Credit Default swaps or CDSs. These CDSs where nominally

This caused massive losses in mortgage backed securities and many banks and investment firms began bleeding money. This also caused a glut of homes on the market which depressed housing prices and slowed the growth of new home building, putting thousands of home builders and laborers out of business. Depressed housing prices caused further complications as it made many homes worth much less than the mortgage

Housing prices stopped rising in 2007. One of the ramifications was that those who rely on re-financing to pay off their previous loans were not able to re-finance any more. People started to default. This entailed big uncertainty the financial market mainly because it became an impossible task to

The mortgage meltdown happened when lenders began to accept people who were not normally qualified for them. The lenders offered the risky borrowers insanely low interest rates for property. In the begging the interest would be low and throughout the time they spiked really high so that the people involved

The problem was everyone who qualified for a mortgage already had one. Lenders knew if they sold a mortgage to a person that defaults the lender gets the house, and houses were always increasing in value in that market, that would be a valuable asset to sell. To keep up with the demand from investors, lenders started selling mortgages to borrowers who wouldn’t have qualified before because of the risk for default. These mortgages are called sub-prime mortgages and lenders started creating tons of them. In the unregulated market, lenders employed predatory tactics to get more borrowers with attractive offers such as no money down, no credit history required, even no proof of income. People never would have qualified before were now buying large houses, and the lenders sold their mortgages to Investment bankers. The investors packed subprime mortgages in with prime mortgages so credit agencies would still give a AAA rating. The rating Agencies who had a conflict of interest by receiving payments from the investment banks, had no liability if their credit ratings were correct or not. They turned a blind eye to the risky CDOs and kept giving AAA ratings. This worked for a while and everyone was happy including the new homeowners. The housing market became hyper inflated with more homeowners than ever. Wall Street continued to sell their CDO’s which were ticking time bombs. The subprime mortgages began

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.

Around 2006 the price of houses began to fall substantially fast. “The oversupply of houses and lack of buyers pushed the house prices down until they really plunged in the late 2006 and early 2007” (The Subprime Mortgage Crisis Explained). These actions threw investors into a big dilemma. In the beginning they believed buying the mortgages would bring them a profit, but quickly realized that the mortgages would cost them more financial damage than reselling the homes. “Nationwide, home vales have declined about 16% since the summer of 2006 and experts project that the drop will continue until homes have lost about 25% of their value” (Biroonak, 2008). In other words mortgage homes are “underwater”, that is, the mortgage owed equals or exceeds the value of the house (Biroonak, 2008). Investors and homeowners started to go more in debt trying to pay off their original debts.

For instance, the increased importance of networks and the rise of highly systemic banks created a system in which the banks became, on one side, too big to fail, and, on the other, too big to save. Indeed, the lesson from Lehman Brothers Chapter 11 is that letting go bankrupt a systemic player (even not one of the largest) might bring about unknown undesirable effects. The policy makers are, therefore, definitely captured because banking sector is architecture in such a way that constrains the policy makers to go through a bail-out in case of a relevant financial distress. So which are the consequences of this behaviour? The outcomes are double: the ex-ante banks’ possibility to engage moral hazard behaviour and the ex-post debt burden on the tax payers. This creates an incentive for the banks to take more risks due to the implicit protection of the government, that rely on the tax payers to pay for the bailouts, creating a substantial problem of fairness and social equity, in which low income class has to pay for the top income class’ errors. Another example of this theory is the state dependence on taxes generated by the financial sector. For instance, in the UK “the financial sector’s gross value added (GVA) rose over the last decade, but has declined since 2009. Its contribution to UK jobs is around 3.6%. Trade in financial services makes up a substantial proportion of the UK’s trade surplus in services. Estimates of the sector’s contribution to Government tax

The financial crisis of 2008 occurred in early 2006 when the mortgage market showed apparent increasing rates of default. Due to these defaults, in 2006 there was a decline in US housing prices after years of exceptional growth. US citizens slowly watched their primary source of wealth deflate into barely anything. By 2007, the prime mortgage rates had higher default rates. Unfortunately Collateralized Mortgage Obligations, allowed this issue to spread from mortgages to other aspects of the American economy.