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The Housing Market And Its Effects On The Economy

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Throughout the 90 's and the turn of the century, the housing market has stood as an economic pillar, supporting growth and prosperity and assisting generations in upward momentum from the lower to middle class. This is why the 2008 housing market crash had such a debilitating effect on the economy. The crash left millions facing foreclosure and millions more underwater. The burst of the housing bubble even effected international markets, causing havoc in other countries. These misguided policies were the main source of the financial turbulence that flattened the U.S. economy.

Predatory lending and meticulously intricate loan pooling helped cause the destruction of this market. Essentially, financial institutions were handing out mortgages to people that were often struggling to repay them, and these Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS 's) were often resold to investors that were unaware of the systemic risk they had purchased. These high-risk loans were gathered together and sold as low-risk securities due to a lack of diversity in the overall portfolio. As these toxic MBS 's were resold into the marketplace, they were separated and reorganized, making it extremely difficult to track the actual value of the derivatives of the bonds.

In order to understand this better, consider 10 containers full of jellybeans, with each container a different color. The beans are all combined, shaken up, and poured back into the jars. Then they are all combined again, cut in half, shaken up,

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