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

Additionally, when America’s economy was melting in 2008, the Federal Reserve played a big role to stabilize it. Besides the Great Depression during the years 1929 through 1939 the worst economic time for the United States, 2008 was unmistakable one of the worst years of America’s economy history. When this economic recession was taking place, the Fed had to take action to avoid another depression and to stop a fall from the financial system. With the help of the Federal Reserve J.P. Morgan Chase and Co.’s they planned to help Bear Stearns (an investment bank) with financial assistance to help the government to buyout AIG, a well-known insurance company. This helped to produce a strategy targeting to stabilize the credit market and also the short-term interest rate from 45% to almost 0 from the benchmark (Coste). Thanks to the Federal Reserve and their well design plan to avoid another recession they prevented the economy of the world or better known as Macroeconomic system from falling and getting it

“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 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.

During the spring of 2008, rumors were circulating that the investment bank Bear Stearns would fail due to their massive investments in subprime mortgages, or “toxic assets.” These rumors were able to decline the companyʻs stock from $171 to $57 dollars a share, and bankruptcy was imminent. Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, realized that Bear Stearns could not be allowed to go bankrupt because they were deeply connected to many other firms, which would result in major economic failure. In response to the crisis, Bernanke lent money to JP Morgan, which then lent the money to Bear Stearns, as the Federal Reserve could not directly lend money to Bear Stearns as it is an unregulated investment bank. After this process, Henry Paulson, the Treasury Secretary, relied on the principle of moral hazard and notified the other banks that

The day Bear Stearns fell was one of the worse financial upsets of our time. As a major American investment company, they ran out of money. Bear Stearns was definitely one of the most exposed to the subprime mortgage crisis after being hit hard in the summer of 2007 when two of its hedge funds crashed. The Federal Reserve and JP Morgan Chase orchestrated an extraordinary rescue attempt that allowed Bear Stearns to borrow emergency money to stay alive and steady. Consequently, in an effort to prevent a crisis on Wall Street.

The 2008 financial crisis led to numerous mortgage foreclosure rates (Angelides et al, 2011). Many mortgage companies filed for bankruptcy and this because many of them were running under drastic losses. Financial institutions were unable to lend money because they were operating under losses and this slowed down the economic activities. This unease led central banks to take relevant action to provide funds in order to encourage lending and also to reestablish faith in the commercial paper markets ( United States. Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission , 2010). Not only did the central banks help in relieving the crisis, the federal government was involved in helping the financial institutions by assuming major additional financial commitments. Federal government funded financial institutions dealing with mortgage purchasing and repackaging, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were declared bankrupt. Alongside the two government funded institutions that were declared bankrupt, several other main investment banks, insurance companies, and commercial banks tied to the real-estate lending were

This is really asking about what happened during the Financial Crisis when Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns went under. Governments oftentimes intervene when there is a danger of massive bank failures. Bank failures have dire consequences to the health of an economy. Banks provide capital to businesses in the form of loans to businesses grow. Banks also provide liquidity to businesses and markets. If banks fail, businesses are unable to access capital to grow their businesses. Liquidity tightens and economic growth is stunted. Additionally, banks running into trouble can lead to "runs on the bank" where people get nervous about their ability to access their cash/savings and pull their money out...people pulling their money out of the banking

On September 15th 2008, Lehman Brothers, one of the United States’ largest investment banks, declared bankruptcy. This event occurred during the Great Recession, a time period where economic activities in the United States had significantly declined in the early 21st century. The Great Recession occurred for numerous reasons; however the primary reasons are due to the housing bubble as well as the subprime mortgage backed securities. What made matters worse during the recession was the day September 29, 2008 when congress could not come in agreement to pass a bailout plan that would have otherwise saved Lehman Brothers. The period of its collapse is an interesting part of United States’ finance industry’s history; this is primarily due to the frequency that which this sort of event can occur actually occur in real world economics. The United States’ housing bubble is an example that is applicable to the black swan theory. This theory is summarized as, “An event or occurrence that deviates beyond what is normally expected of a situation and that would be extremely difficult to predict.” (“Black Swan Theory”). The severity of the housing bubble effect had rendered the Fed’s primary tool of open market operations to be ineffective. The Fed had to rely on other measures that are infrequently used; in this case was quantitative easing. Quantitative easing is the injection of reserves into circulation to promote economic activity as well as decrease the unemployment rate. This

The 2008 financial meltdown resulted in the most treacherous investment landscape observed since the great depression. The most notorious issue was the subprime mortgage crisis, which had a ripple effect felt through every market in the world. The banks, whose leverage rate should never have been higher than two times capitalization, surged as high as thirty to forty times market cap. With this level of exposure, any unforeseen market fluctuations could mean disaster. Lehman Brothers, the oldest investment bank on Wall Street, went bankrupt and thousands lost their jobs. Outside of finance, thousands of companies in the United States and abroad had to fire significant portions of their workforce, thus furthering the economic decline and plunging the US into an economic recession. In the late 1990s, Congress repealed the legislation separating commercial and investment banks, which resulted in investment banks overreaching their bounds. The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 was enacted due to the effects of the subprime mortgage crisis, which allowed the US Treasury to spend billions of dollars to bail out the investment banks by purchasing distressed assets. However, the bailout plan has created a debate over whether it was a good idea for the government to bailout the investment banks. Also, if the government fared better or worse in the years following the bailout.

Under the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), the U.S. Treasury played a key role in stabilizing the financial system, the auto industry, and the housing markets during the 2008 financial crisis. Essentially, the U.S. Treasury guaranteed money market funds, provided capital to over 700 banks, and provided a bailout to AIG to avoid a widespread collapse in the financial industry. Investors and consumers had lost faith in the financial system and were pulling their funds out in record numbers; panic was spreading as Americans were speculating this could be the next big depression. It was essential for the U.S. Treasury to act to restore public confidence immediately. The FDIC deposit insurance was increased to $250,000 as another attempt to lure investors and depositors back to the banks (Reyes, 2013). The U.S. Treasury not only had to provide enough capital reserves to banks to enable them to put money back into the hands of consumers but also encourage consumers to spend and invest.

AIG was one of the world’s biggest insurers. The insurance company provides life insurance and retirement services, insurance products for commercial and institutional customers and mortgage insurance. In 2007 AIG had $64 billion in AAA CDO contract debts. AIG continued to post losses each quarter of near $20 billion for the next year. With $180 billion the government bailed out AIG and took over the company, controlling nearly 80% of its stock and replacing management. The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission stated in January 2011 (FCIC report): “The Commission concludes AIG failed and was rescued by the government primarily because its enormous sales of credit default swaps were made without putting up the initial collateral, setting aside capital reserves, or hedging its exposure – a profound failure in corporate governance, particularly its risk management practices. AIG's failure was possible because of the sweeping deregulation of over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives, including credit default swaps, which effectively eliminated federal and state regulation of these products, including capital and margin requirements that would have lessened the likelihood of AIG's failure” (The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission,

On September 10, 2008, Lehman Brothers announced the lowest decline as the shares dropped to 45%. It left the market value at $5.4 billion after the Korea Development Bank rejected to make an investment deal that could rescue Lehman. The company would seek capital from other investors in order to recover their financial situation. These efforts faltered and the situation grew more severe, even after the US government had already saved the Bear Stearns and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Though it is less likely that the US government will keep Lehman's bailout, there should be a resolution from the Federal Reserve System to bolster Lehman’s finance so as to prevent the US economic declination.

158-years-old institution, the Lehman Brothers Holdings, Inc., Sought chapter 11 protections on September 15, 2008, indicating the largest bankruptcy filed in the U.S. history. The Lehman declared $639 billion in assets and $619 billion on debts, which surpassed the previous bankruptcy filed by WorldCom and Enron. The Lehman brother was 4th best-ranked U.S. Investment bank and globally 7th best investment bank before the collapse. An industry that had 25,000 employees worldwide crumbled into almost nothing within a week, which is one of the seminal event in the global financial crisis. The Lehman Brothers’ demise was a result of substantial attention to the U.S. subprime mortgage and the real estate markets that coaxed into global financial crisis, when these markets began to slow-down.

In 1994, Richard S. Fuld took control of Lehman Brothers as its Chief Executive Officer (CEO). Under Fuld’s aggressive leadership, the company flourished and became one of the largest investment banks in the United States. （Crossley-Holland 2009) reported that in 1994, each Lehman Brothers stock was averaging at $4 and by 2007 it catapulted to $82 creating a 20 fold increase. From 1994, Lehman Brothers gradually adopted an aggressive growth business strategy by expanding into highly complex and risky products such as Credit Default Swaps (CDS) and Mortgage-Backed Securities (MBS). By 2007, Lehman Brothers was the biggest underwriter of mortgage-backed securities of the U.S. real estate market.

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