The Financial Crisis Of 2007-2008

The outbreak and spread of the financial crisis of 2007-2008 have caused the most of countries into severe economic difficulties and also created an adverse impact on the global economy. The beginning of the financial crisis is defaults in the subprime mortgage market in the USA. Although the global economy seems to recover since 2009, the impacts of the crisis still affect many countries until now. This essay focuses on the background and impacts of financial crisis, and the learning from the movie The Big Short.

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

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?’’

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.

Our society seems to doing well since the financial crisis of 2008. The country is recovering from the Great Recession, unemployment is down and the global domestic product is up. People have jobs and are paying taxes. President Obama lowered our budget deficit and promised to make healthcare more available to all. On average, America is well on its way to recovery. But what about the people that slipped through the cracks of the financial stimulus plan? These are the people that lost their jobs, and subsequently their homes. These are America’s impoverished and homeless.

The turmoil in the financial markets also known as the financial crisis of 2008 was considered the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Many areas of the United States suffered. The housing market plummeted and as a result of that, many evictions occurred, as well as foreclosures and unemployment. Leading up to the financial crash, most of the money that was made by investors was based on people speculating on investments like real estate, stocks, debt buying, and complex investment tools instead of actual tangible products that people purchased or needed. There are a number of dangers that arise when investors make large sums of money that are not tied to the actual value of a product and investors should not be able to make substantial profits off of the misfortune and poor choices of others. Those practices are very unethical and there should have been an increase in government intervention after the financial crash of 2008. The financial crash of 2008 was result of deregulation and male dominance in the financial services industry.

The financial crisis of 2008 did not arise by chance. The meltdown was precipitated by systematic striping away of the New Deal era policies of bank regulation. Most notable of these deregulatory acts was that of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999. This bill repealed the legislation which held commercial banks and investment banks separate. As the beginning of the 21 century approached many bankers clamored for an end to the policy of the “firewall” between Investment and commercial banks. Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999, sought to create more competition in the financial services industry. The policy, however, lead to the conglomeration of many corporate entities as banks had the capital to invest (in the form of consumer deposits) in a

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the agency created after the financial meltdown of 2008, has taken aim at the cash advance loan industry almost since the agency opened its doors. The CFPB 's latest attack is in the form of proposed rules that many people believe would "regulate cash advance loans out of existence." The proposed rules would apply to every lender whether they make online cash advances or operate a brick-and-mortar store. Throughout his campaign, Donald Trump repeatedly expressed his antipathy for the CFPB and the law that created the agency, the Dodd-Frank Act. Now that Trump has won the presidential election, many people are wondering whether the cash advance loan industry might benefit under his administration.

During the lead up to the financial crisis of 2007-08, a term was coined to describe what was happening in the financial markets. The term was: Shadow Banking System. The creation of the term was attributed to economist and money manager, Paul McCulley, who described it as a large segment of financial intermediation that is routed outside the balance sheets of regulated commercial banks and other depository institutions (St. Louis Fed). In simpler terms, institutions that are in the shadow banking system are not regulated like commercial banks, and carry more risk due to their investments. Examples of shadow banking institutions are money market funds, mutual funds, hedge funds, etc. During the early 1990s, most American citizens didn’t know or never heard of money market funds or mutual funds; typically, the only people who knew of the “shadow banking system” were most likely senior officers at the big banks or individuals who were experts in the financial markets. However, that all changed. At the turn of the century, the shadow banking system started to gain steam and was growing at a faster rate than traditional banks. At the peak of its growth, right before the financial crisis, the shadow banking system, in terms of liabilities, was about 1.5-2 times larger than traditional banks (St. Louis Fed).

The financial crisis of 2008 was the key element which resulted in the depression that the globe is immersed in today. It was astonishing to see that a crisis in the American housing market can initiate an economic depression with effect ranging so far and wide, that it threatened the global economy. Often it is compared to be as large and impactful as The Great Depression of 1930's. The credit crunch resulting from the liquidity problems of the major market players created an atmosphere of utmost distrust amongst the investors regarding the financial institutions in place.

During the financial crisis of 2008, the biggest Ponzi scheme in history was uncovered. It was run by Bernard Madoff and encompassed roughly $65 billion (Ferrell, 2009). Madoff first entered the investment business in 1960 when he started his own company, Madoff Securities (Ferrell, 2009). As his business grew, Madoffbegan employing some of his family members: Peter, Madoff’s brother, joined the firm and helped set it apart from the competition by introducing modern technology. Other family members to join were Madoff’s wife, Ruth; Peter’s niece, Shana; and both Madoff’s sons, Mark and Andrew (Ferrell, 2009). Madoff’sbusiness was flourishing, trading billions of dollars of investors’ money, establishing Madoff as a credible and respected figure on Wall Street. Madoff expanded his influence and reputation by serving as the chairman of NASDAQ for three years in the early 1990s (Ferrell, 2009). It is assumed that the beginning profits ofMadoff’s business were legitimate earnings and not based on fraud. The Ponzi scheme is estimated to have started around 1990, in order to keep up with the high 10-12% return on investments that he promised to his clients (Ferrell, 2009). Madoff’s investors were affluent, prestigious and very intelligent and they trusted him with their money. Throughout the course of the fraud, Madoff was investigated numerous times by the SEC, without any findings or actions taken. There were many individuals who suspected Madoff was running a Ponzi scheme, the

The world before the financial crisis of 2008 had stability. Iceland in 2000 was viewed as the perfect place to live and have your family grow. Iceland had clean energy, high standard of living, jobs, and low government debt. Iceland was a place were children played and parents laughed and enjoyed their life. Everyone lived well; Iceland was the role model of finance, until it all melted away. Iceland let giant corporations come into its territory and exploit its geothermal and hydroelectric resources and its banks became so large to where their banks became larger than their economy, impossible to bail out. The banks became unruly where the people even supposed to regulate the bank one third of them worked for the bank. The cause of the

The financial crisis of 2008 was the worst economic disaster since the Great Depression. It caused the collapse, take over, merging, or buying out of financial services firms and banks such as, Lehman Brothers, Merill Lynch, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, AIG, Royal Bank of Scotland, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The “Big Three” credit rating agencies, Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s, and Fitch Ratings, were at the helm of the financial crisis of 2008 because they were all found of wrongly assigning triple- A securities ratings to mortgages and debt assets that were way below “investment grade” level, which greatly contributed to the growing financial crisis. The ensuing result of the financial crisis of 2008 was the Great Recession, a period of great economic decline in America and the rest of the world. The financial crisis and Great Recession were triggered by subprime mortgages and mortgage backed securities, known as Collaterized Debt Obligations (CDOs). Mortgage-backed securities are a form of an asset-backed security that deals with different type of mortgages, while subprime mortgages are mortgages that are loaned out to people with low credit scores. CDO’s are very complex because they are built into different levels, known as tranches, that consist of various types of assets. The tranches of CDO’s are structured on the basis of risk, with the lowest credit rated tranches holding the highest amount of risk. A demand for mortgage-backed securities and subprime mortgages

The Global Financial Crisis, also known as The Great Recession, broke out in the United States of America in the middle of 2007 and continued on until 2008. There were many factors that contributed to the cause of The Global Financial Crisis and many effects that emerged, because the impact it had on the financial system. The Global Financial Crisis started because of house market crash in 2007. There were many factors that contributed to the housing market crash in 2007. These factors included: subprime mortgages, the housing bubble, and government policies and regulations. The factors were a result of poor financial investments and high risk gambling, which slumped down interest rates and price of many assets. Government policies and regulations were made in order to attempt to solve the crises that emerged; instead the government policies made backfired and escalated the problem even further.

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