The Global Financial Crisis 0f 2008

In my research you will find that I outlined the cause and effect of the mortgage crisis. I also speak on the falling housing prices due to the mortgage crisis and the domino effect that will be created on and for the economy. I will also speak on the foreclosure rates caused by sub-prime loans and no fall back plan to help in the case of the mortgagor defaults.

In 2008 America’s financial system was brought to a stand still as decades of negligence and financial decisions caused our economy to sink into the worst recession since the great depression. Cultivating a problem worse than America has seen in roughly a century points one finger not at a particular cause, but a string of events that finally gave way. Now, eight years later our economy is still recovering, and time has allowed us to look back at decades of mistakes to try and connect the dots of the perfect storm that collapsed our financial market in 2008. In 2009 Brookings Institution, one of Washington’s oldest think tanks, concluded there were three causes that resulted in the crisis. Economists Martin Baily and Douglas Elliot stated that the results of government intervention in the housing market, the influences Wall Street had on Washington, and global economic forces were the three main causes of the economic collapse. They believed that a housing bubble inflated when Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two government-sponsored enterprises, intervened in the housing market. The banking industry was called out to be blamed for years of manipulation of our political and financial systems. Lastly, Baily and Elliot cite the global economy and the existence of a credit boom throughout European and Asian nations. Low inflation and consistent growth throughout the world economy spiked investors’ interest in acquiring riskier investments, which encouraged

The financial crisis that occurred in 2007-2008 is narrowly related to what happened with the housing market and the foreclosure crisis. In 2006, the housing market peaked due to newly available loans such as interest adjustable loans, interest only loans, and zero down loans for people with low-income jobs. Housing prices were increasing radically and new homeowners were taking out mortgages that they would be unable to pay for in the future, all in order to be able to afford homes with such steep real estate value. By 2007, things began to go downhill. Interest rates had begun to rise steeply, mortgage companies had to file bankruptcy, and banks across the country required bailout funds from the U.S. Treasury in an effort to recover

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 main reason for the crisis was a boom and bust in the housing markets at the same time. Home values rose rapidly during the beginning of the 2000’s. Many homeowners used their homes and other assets to withdraw equity to produce add-ons to the house, such as kitchens, decks, or patios. Once the value of the houses went down, they could not pay off this extra debt. Homes were beginning to be valued at less than what the homeowners owed on them. This period was powered by leverage, securitization, and structured finance. Housing was a hot commodity at that time, and Americans were taking out hefty loans in order to pay for them. There was a rise in self-employment at that time, and borrowing money was very relevant at that time. Adjustable rate mortgages, which provided initial interest rates and low monthly payments were the most common form of loans between 2004 and 2008. The banks were not careful in their securitization of loans, and a lot of loans defaulted. The defaults mainly revolved around the failing of the housing market. At the time, there was low requirements for down payments on houses. Lenders were only asking for approximately 3%, today it is up around 10% (Golub). This allowed for more and more people to put a down payment on a house, who would not be capable of paying the banks back. During this time, there was a dramatic increase in sub-prime lending, which means that the people borrowing the money had lowering credit

The lack of money became so bad in the US, UK, and Ireland, that the government had to bail them out. the realization of all this by the public lead to a complete loss of confidence by consumers and investors all around, this lead to less spending and investing. all this lead up to something called a credit crunch. a credit crunch is a sudden shortage of funds for lending. the credit crunch was driven by the bad handling of loans on mortgages that led to a rise in defaults and sub prime mortgages. these mortgages were in america, but the downturn was able to spread throughout the entire globe. people with poor income and poor credit were getting huge loans for mortgages that they werent able to pay back. a cause for this was probably due to the huge incentive for mortgage brokers to sell mortgages at high prices because that's how they got paid, and that played a huge roll in the rise of mortgage defaults. mortgage broker borrowed money to be able to lend mortgage, the lending was not financed out of savings accounts. for many of these mortgages, there was a 1 to 2 year period of low interest rates, at the end of these periods, interest rates rose dramatically, not allowing people to afford the mortgage

Throughout history there has always been some sort of a class struggle. The rich always seemed to get richer while the poor barely managed to get by. One of the main things that contributed to the ever-expanding gap between the rich and the poor was greed. Whether it was the greed for money or for power, greed was certainly a driving force. More recently, the greed of several, rich and powerful individuals helped to cause one of the largest financial collapses of modern times. The purpose of this paper is to establish some of the key players in the economic crash of 2008, and to show some common

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.

Well how did the Housing crisis happen in the first place? Well what banks were doing was looking for fast short term profits. To get these profits banks had to give out “sub-prime mortgages”. Sub prime mortgages are basically loans given to people who would have a rather hard time paying back the cash. Because of this banks were able to increase interest rates. When the banks raised the interest rates what they did was create a hypothetical bubble that was bound to burst. When this happened banks began to fail.

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.

Further, 500,000 additional foreclosures began during the acute phase of the financial crisis. Since the recession, 8.8 million jobs have been lost according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. According to the Employment Situation from October 2009, the unemployment rate reached the highest rate since 1983 (Goodman, 2009). The economic crisis reduced spending on social welfare programs and people lost jobs which caused decreased consumption (Robe, Podpiera, 2013). Low incomes, depreciation of houses, the high number of unemployed people and instability caused liquidity trap. So, people were holding on their cash. On the market was not enough of qualified borrowers and investors were not investing cause of really low expected returns. The whole economy was frozen and the government was spending trillions to save US banking

The new lackadaisical lending requirements and low interest rates drove housing prices higher, which only made the mortgage backed securities and CDOs seem like an even better investment. Now consider the housing market which had become a housing bubble, which had now burst, and now people could not pay for their incredibly expensive houses or keep up with their ballooning mortgage payments. Borrowers started defaulting, which put more houses back on the market for sale. But there were not any buyers. Supply was up, demand was down, and home prices started collapsing. As prices fell, some borrowers suddenly had a mortgage for way more than their home was currently worth and some stopped paying. That led to more defaults, pushing prices down further. As this was happening, the big financial institutions stopped buying sub-prime mortgages and sub-prime lenders were getting stuck with bad loans. By 2007, some big lenders had declared bankruptcy. The problems spread to the big investors, who had poured money into the mortgage backed securities and CDOs. They started losing money on their investments. All these of these financial instruments resulted in an incredibly complicated web of assets, liabilities, and risks. So that when things went bad, they went bad for the entire financial system. Some major financial players declared bankruptcy and others were forced into mergers, or needed

The global financial crisis of 2008-09 that spread contagiously across the globe has particularly hit the European economies hard, accentuating turmoil in the world financial markets and precipitating the European sovereign debt crisis almost instantaneously. This has consequently wiped away all of the EU’s accomplishments in economic growth and job creation (European Commission, 2010a:3). Statistics published subsequently exposed the magnitude of the crisis: real GDP contracted by 4%, unemployment soared at an unprecedented level, public finances deteriorated, and social cohesion in the EU has fragmented (Eurostat, 2010). The crisis has also exposed the fundamental weakness of the Union, especially in the face of new challenges from emerging market competition, an ageing population, and depletion of resources. Therefore, the Europe 2020 strategy adopted by the European Commission in 2010 introduces a new growth model for the EU to respond to the various challenges mentioned above, particularly the global financial crisis. (European Commission, 2010a:5).

As evidenced by the plethora of explanations concerning it, the 2007-08 financial crisis that originated in the United-States is highly complex. The literature presents various causes, most of which can be placed on either side of a debate between government intervention and laissez-faire of market mechanisms. On one side, it is argued that financial actors are responsible for the crisis as a result of their use and distribution of complex and risky financial products, and their irresponsible lending. On the other side, the arguments centre on policy failures, or unintended consequences of government initiatives, as interventions into economic mechanisms. Some explanations see both financial markets and policy at the origin of the crisis, and some elements are common to all of these interpretations. Through these varying explanations, we may find certain facts about the time leading up to the crisis, explaining its nature and steps.