The Subprime Crisis Of 2007 / 2008

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 lead up to the current recession, when the real estate market began to fall, there were so many investors shorting stocks and securitized mortgage packages that were already falling, that the market simply fell further. There were no buyers at the bottom, and the professional investors made millions off of the losses of others. Beyond this, there was no real federal regulation for securitized mortgages, since there was no real way to gauge the mathematical risk of any given package. This allowed the investors to take advantage of the system and to short loans on real people’s homes. Once these securities were worthless, many of the homebuyer’s defaulted on their mortgages and were left penniless. No matter from which angle this crisis is looked at, the blame rests squarely with the managers who began the entire cycle, the ones who pursued the securitization of mortgages. Their incompetence not only led to the losses of Americans who have never invested in the stock market, but to losses for their shareholders.

According to Bates & Robb (2015), the history of subprime mortgage lending dates back to the early 1970's when the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) passed. The CRA change the way federally chartered banks loan money in inner-city communities to primarily low income and minority consumers (Schuchter, & Jutte, 2014). The intent of the CRA was not to prevent the financial crisis; however, it did play a role in the mortgage crisis. The original indictment of the statute, however, it failed to insulate low- and moderate-income communities from the harshest impacts of the crisis (Brescia, 2014). The CRA legislation purpose is to generate a response to lending activities that occurred primarily in urban communities, but it also applies to depository

The beginning of the crisis: From the early to the mid-2000’s, high-risk mortgages became available from lenders who funded mortgages by repackaging them into pools that were sold to investors. New financial products were used to apportion these risks, with private-label mortgage-backed securities providing most of the funding of subprime mortgages. The less

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 most commonly known sub-prime finance crisis came into illumination when a sudden rise in home foreclosures in 2006 twirled seemingly out of control in 2007, triggering a nationwide economic crisis that went worldwide within the year. The greatest responsibility is pointed at the lenders who created such problems. It was the lenders who, at the end of the day, lend finances to citizens with poor credit and a high risk of failure to pay. When the Feds inundated the markets with growing capital

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?’’

There is no doubt that subprime lending was a major cause of the Recession. It was a tactic used by investment banks in order to get more money from unsuspecting homeowners. However, lenders found out that most of the people who were qualified to have a mortgage already had one. In turn, the lenders had to lower their credit criteria for people to take out a loan on a house. This is how the term subprime lending came to be in the financial world. As a result of subprime lending, the investors were able to make millions off of these mortgages. “ Many American homeowners bought houses they could not afford, signed into mortgage agreements they could not understand or which were misleading and took equity out of homes as if they were cash machines” (Cushman 1).

A mortgage meltdown and financial crisis of unbelievable magnitude was brewing and very few people, including politicians, the media, and the poor unsuspecting mortgage borrowers anticipated the ramifications that were about to occur. The financial crisis of 2008 was the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression; ultimately coalescing into the largest bankruptcies in world history--approximately 30 million people lost their jobs, trillions of dollars in wealth diminished, and millions of people lost their homes through foreclosure or short sales. Currently, however, the financial situation has improved tremendously. For example, the unemployment rate has significantly improved from 10 percent in October of 2009 to five percent in

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

were reaping the rewards while taxpayers were inheriting the risk. In 1993 Congress met the opposition half way by slowly incorporating direct federal loans but still keeping guarantees in place for the banks. After the financial crisis of 2008, President Obama completely eliminated the middleman and fully implemented direct student loans (Kingkade). Although this stopped large banks from profiting off of government backed loans, it still didn’t reduce the supply of loans or the ease of obtaining them.

The 2008 financial crisis led to a sharp increase in mortgage foreclosures primarily subprime leading to a collapse in several mortgage lenders. Recurrent foreclosures and the harms of subprime mortgages were caused by loose lending practices, housing bubble, low interest rates and extreme risk taking (Zandi, 2008). Additionally, expert analysis on the 2008 financial crisis assert that the cause was also due to erroneous monetary policy moves and poor housing policies. The federal government encouraged the expansion of risky mortgages to under-qualified borrowers. Congress pushed for the support of affordable housing through extended procurement of non-prime loans for applicants with low income (Zandi, 2008). The cutting down

There is no doubt that subprime lending was a major cause of the Recession. It was a tactic used by investment banks in order to get more money from unsuspecting homeowners. However, lenders found out that most of the people who were qualified to have a mortgage already had one. In turn, the lenders had to lower their credit criteria for people to take out a loan on a house. This is how the term subprime lending came to be in the financial world. As a result of subprime lending, the investors were able to make millions off of these mortgages. People who qualified for a subprime mortgage usually had a credit score below that of 620. To make the subprime mortgage deal more customer friendly, the lending banks decided to have the people who qualified for these mortgages didn’t have to have a down payment. Normally, the down payment would be as much as 20%, but this made it easier for people to get mortgages without having to worry about how much money they needed at the beginning of their purchase. “ Many American homeowners bought houses they could not afford,

The U.S. subprime mortgage crisis was a set of events that led to the 2008 financial crisis, characterized by a rise in subprime mortgage defaults and foreclosures. This paper seeks to explain the causes of the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis and how this has led to a generalized credit crisis in other financial sectors that ultimately affects the real economy. In recent decades, financial industry has developed quickly and various financial innovation techniques have been abused widely, which is the main cause of this international financial crisis. In addition, deregulation, loose monetary policies of the Federal Reserve, shadow banking system also play

One of the first indications of the late 2000 financial crisis that led to downward spiral known as the “Recession” was the subprime mortgages; known as the “mortgage mess”. A few years earlier the substantial boom of the housing market led to the uprising of mortgage loans. Because interest rates were low, investors took advantage of the low rates to buy homes that they could in return ‘flip’ (reselling) and homeowners bought homes that they typically wouldn’t have been able to afford. High interest rates usually keep people from borrowing money because it limits the amount available to use for an investment. But the creation of the subprime mortgage