Why The Financial Crisis Was A Specific Law Case Involving Lehman Brothers

The financial crisis from2007 to 2008 is considered the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1920s and destroyed the U.S. economy severely. It led the housing prices fell 31.8%, the unemployment rate rose a peak of 10% in the United States. Especially the subprime market, began defaulting on their mortgage. Housing industry had collapsed. This crisis was not an accident, it caused by varies of factors. The unregulated securitization system, the US government deregulation, poor monetary policies, the irresponsibility of 3 rating agencies, the massed shadow banking system and so on. From my view, the unregulated private label mortgages securitization is the main contribute factor which led the global financial crisis in 2008.

On October 3, 2008 President George W. Bush signed the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, otherwise known as the “bailout.” The Purpose of this act was defined as to, “Provide authority for the Federal Government to purchase and insure certain types of trouble assets for the purpose of providing stability to and preventing disruption in the economy and financial system and protecting taxpayers, to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to provide incentives for energy production and conservation, to extend certain expiring provisions, to provide individual income tax relief, and for other purposes” (Emergency Economic Stabilization Act). In my paper I will explain and show the relationship between the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 and subprime lending, the collapse of the housing market, bundled mortgage securities, liquidity, and the Government 's efforts to bailout the nation 's banks.

The recent mortgage crisis in the US was unprecedented. It led to a massive clampdown of financial institutions, occasioning one of the worst financial melt-downs the US has ever faced (Jaffe, 2008). Quite naturally, it would be necessary to examine the cause of the crisis in order to draft prophylactic measures that would prevent the same financial disaster in the future. This paper will discuss the events that led to the mortgage crisis.

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.

While there are several speculated causes to the recession of 2007, one cause that stands out is the housing bubble burst. "As the housing bubble burst and trillions of dollars ' worth of toxic mortgages began to go bad in 2007, fear spread through the massive firms that form the heart of Wall Street ("Meltdown")". The first repercussions of the housing bubble bursting were the floating rumors about the investment bank, Bear Stearns. The rumors of the bank 's imminent bankruptcy were so abundant, that they became a self fulfilling prophecy ("Meltdown"). In an attempt to save the bank, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke created a deal with JPMorgan ("Meltdown"). This deal stated that "the federal government would use $30 billion to cover Bear Stearns ' questionable assets tied to toxic mortgages

Michael Lewis, The Big Short, film strategically provided three separate but parallel stories of the U.S mortgage housing of 2008. The movie demonstrated how Wall Street, in a desperate search for profits, lunched “bonds” products with riskier mortgages. As a result, lenders were no longer interested in if a borrower could pay them back. In disbelieved, I noticed deceitful tactics that lenders used, throughout the movie, to convince Americans to take out mortgages they could not afford. Chronologically, Americans’ saving levels dropped while countries ' savings tripled. Once the Recession was in full effect, the US government rescued Wall Street, passing an unimaginably large bill, the bill we are still paying off. To most Americans’ surprise, nearly all of the rescue money went into Wall Street executives’ pockets.

“The Fed did not bailout Bear at taxpayer expense, but enabled – as it is mandated – the financial markets to continue to function. History will call the Fed’s action the right move at the right time”, says Jeremy Siegel, Ph.D. The Bear Stearns Company began a financial meltdown in July 2007. By March 2008, it was ready to file Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Some people believe that the Federal Reserve should not have stepped in to bailout Bear Stearns because it was rewarding reckless business behavior and Bear should have been left to file bankruptcy. The deal of Bear Stearns was not a government bailout; it was rather a loan to preserve jobs, homes, savings, the economy, the shareholders of Bear, and the financial

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 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.

The definitive effects of the securitization of subprime mortgages on the financial crisis accentuated the prominent failure of institutions to follow proper risk management and investment guidelines. Financial institutions, failed to aligned company goals with risk management practices and instead fueled greed by issuing monetary incentives based on the quantity of subprime loans issued or securities sold, rather than concentrate on the quality. Investment banks such as Lehman Brother, Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch all participated in risky investment practices, which compounded the institutions risk and involvement in the securities. In 2006 Merrill Lynch doubled their endeavors in mortgaged backed securities and by the

The beginning of the crisis is marked as the downfall of Bear Stearns Financial. The company, with a triple A rating, was sidelined with problems of lack of cash flow, and a piling up of unpaid debts on housing mortgages. Bear Stearns invested heavily in these mortgages, because they were lucrative so long as the loans were being paid off. Foreclosures did not begin to pile up until after the 2005-2006 years of mass investment in the housing boom had already seeped into every corner of the United States. The first feeling of a tremble in the market caused Bear Stearn's stock to plummet, and the

In 2008 the U.S. and global economy confronted one of the worst crisis in the history. These financial crisis were considered the worst since the great depression in 1930’s. Several events took a place early in 2007 which led to the economy crash, such as, the massive decrease in home prices in the United States after it was significantly high. This decline in home mortgage market expanded rapidly causing massive crisis in the whole United States financial sector (Bullard, Neely, and Wheelock 2-4). Those crisis had dangerous effects on the stock banking industry, insurance firms, and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two most important enterprises commissioned by the government to assist mortgage lending, and some other mortgage lenders and financial service organizations. Those crisis generated a decline in banks and financial associations trust of others, believing that they will never get paid back. They simply stopped offering loans to people who needed money to buy a house or start a business, which created a massive decline in the home mortgage market and the whole financial sector of the United States (Havemann 1)

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

The 2008 Financial crisis is indisputably the worst financial crisis in the contemporary era. There is great a number of combining causes that ultimately lead to the collapse of the financial markets. Some of these causes include the slow deregulation reforms initiated in the ’60, the introduction of new, financial instruments which risks were not appropriately understood, and of course the new world wide interconnection occurred through securitisation. This essay aims at explaining the functions and the risks of the financial instruments that were included before the crisis, such as Collateralised Debt Obligations, Mortgage Backed Securities and Credit Default Swaps, understanding the impact of the instruments on the market and exploring their relations in the securitisation process to ultimately understand the extent of the impact of securitisation in the 2008 financial crisis.

In relation to the increase in house’s price, the rise of financial agreements such as mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and collateralized debt obligations (CDO) encouraged investors to invest in the U.S housing market (Krugman, 2009). When housing price declined in the U.S, many financial institutions that borrowed and invested in subprime mortgage reported losses. In addition, the fall of housing price resulted in default and foreclosure and that began to exhaust consumer’s wealth and