The Current Great Recession - Who Is To Blame Essay

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.

The U.S. economy is currently experiencing its worst crisis since the Great Depression. The crisis started in the home mortgage market, especially the market for so-called “subprime” mortgages, and is now spreading beyond subprime to prime mortgages, commercial real estate, corporate junk bonds, and other forms of debt. Total losses of U.S. banks could reach as high as one-third of the total bank capital. The crisis has led to a sharp reduction in bank lending, which in turn is causing a severe recession in the U.S. economy.

All the economy’s parts seem to be working together for a change: joblessness is under 5% - a 24 year low – yet inflation is holding steady at 3%, a combination that economists thought impossible” (Pooley). This article placed the economy in very favorable position, but the economy collapsed back in 2008 when Wall Street folded. In a video published by Johnathan Jarvis titled “The Cause and Effects of the 2008 Financial Crisis,” the video explains how the economy went from being healthy and vibrant, to desperate and helpless because investors were creating mortgages with people who were not financially stable, and those mortgagors were more than likely struggling to pay their debts prior to attaining a sub-prime mortgage loan. When these sub-prime mortgages defaulted, the house was reposed by the mortgagee and put on the market to sell. When the house went up for sale because of the default, the

Many people today would consider the 2008, United States financial crisis a simple “malfunction” or “mistake”, but it was nothing close to that. Contrary to what many believe, renowned economists and financial advisors regarded the financial crisis of 2007 and 2008 to be the most devastating crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930’s. To make matters worse, the decline in the economy expanded nationwide, resulting in the recession of 2007 to 2009 (Brue). David Einhorn, CEO of GreenHorn Capital, even goes as far as to say "What strikes me the most about the recent credit market crisis is how fast the world is trying to go back to business as usual. In my view, the crisis wasn't an accident. We didn't get unlucky. The crisis came

George Santayana, a Spanish poet and philosopher said, "Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it." This quote applies to the Great Depression of 1929 and the Great Recession of 2008. There are many similarities between the two, like the causes, the actual events, and the aftermaths. Several factors led to the Great Depression, which were the following: overproduction by business and agriculture, unequal distribution of wealth, Americans buying less, and finally, the stock market crash of 1929. The Great Recession also had similar factors leading to it, like the housing “bubble” burst and less consumer spending. In both events, the Presidents enacted programs that they believed would help the American people.

credit insurers such as AIG). Firms/investors began to pull funding from any firm thought to be vulnerable to losses. The whole system collapsed as a result of mortgages being heavily leveraged and led to a financial meltdown ("The Recent Past."). The meltdown started to become visible when Bear Stearns was forced to sale in March of 2008. Then September of 2008 became an infamous month as Fannie and Freddie Mac were bailed out by the US government, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, Bank of America acquired Merrill Lynch, and AIG received emergency liquidity assistance from the Federal Reserve (Bernanke). Although some might erroneously believe that the Financial System does not greatly affect the Economy, Alan Blinder points out in his book After the Music Stopped: The Financial Crisis, the Response, and the Work Ahead that “… Finance is more like the circulatory system of the economic body. And if the blood stops flowing… well, you don’t want to think about it” (5). The worst macroeconomic performance in the post World War II US resulted from the financial crisis according to Blinder

The 2008 housing market meltdown in America created a ripple effect that had a negative impact on multiple real estate and stock markets throughout the world. Also, many people who were investors in the America market have never recovered from this financial disaster. So, one must contemplate how this event could have transpired in a country with such a strong economy with governmental regulations designed to protect the average investor. Nevertheless, it is simple, it took brokers, real estate appraisers, realtors, Wall Street, and mortgage companies combined unethical behavior to allow greed to be his or her guidance in pursuing wealth form unsuspecting new home purchasers who could afford his and her recent purchase, a new house.

The United States has always funded the opportunistic financial well-being of its citizens. There has never been a financial crisis worse than that of the Great Depression until the 2008 financial crisis. Even though times were much tougher within the 20’s than that of the late 2000’s, policies were much different, condensing the absence of hope of happiness. There is always room for improvement among any economic standpoint of the ladder, but sometimes it’s just very hard to make some. Times are always tough and people functioning as a society always focus upon the short term involvements of the stock(s), but never seem to concentrate on the long run. However, with mistakes come lessons learned and improvements to economic ventures. Both the 2008 financial crisis and the Great Depression has taught us many things about our own markets and budget capabilities. Upon coincidental financial crises, times and polices were much different, but the reasoning upon the doubt can and will alter the course of economic futures and endeavors.

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” These words were first written by Italian philosopher, George Santayana. The meaning is all but spelled out for the reader, the past is important, it deserves its due - don’t brush it aside, don’t pretend it didn’t happen – to better build the world of tomorrow, you need to remember (and account for) the mistakes of yesterday. The mortgage crisis, and all that it lead too for our economy, back in 2007, is an event that should never be forgotten… lest we inadvertently doom ourselves by going through it all over again. Today, of course, the situation has significantly improved; our nation managed to get over this rather sizable hump and bounce back from it (not fully healed, but certainly better than we were only a few years ago). That’s not good enough for me though; in order to truly overcome this event (that many have already put behind them and forgotten about, myself included, prior to writing this essay) and push ahead, we need to go over how it happened in the first place. Therefore, today I’ll be talking about the mortgage meltdown crisis, suffered by the United States and felt around the world, of 2007; I will cover how the crisis actually happened, the lessons learned from the collapse / the silver linings of the collapse, and how real estate buyers are intelligently learning from the past in order to benefit today.

The year was 2008; and the first decade of the new millennium was drawing to an end on an extraordinarily low point in America’s economic history. What has come to be known as The Great Recession would have led to an apocalyptic collapse of the world economy, had it not been for governmental intervention. The financial crises tattooed drastic and lasting effects on the lives of the majority of Americans; among other things, many lost their homes, savings, and their investments. Needless to say, there was an overall sense of despair throughout the heartland, and the big questions on everyone’s minds were: “What do we do now?” and “Where do we go from here?”

During the largest recession the United States has seen since the great depression, the Treasury Department sprung into action to stave off another depression. Within a short period of time after the housing bubble burst, financial institutions started to fail. Credit and liquidity virtually vanished within days. The government was forced to react quickly to thwart a complete financial collapse. An estimate from the public interest group Better Markets has calculated the cost of the recession close to $12.8 trillion (Puzzanghera, 2012). This number is criticized since it includes losses in economic output, GDP, and bail-outs, while home equity losses and consumer net wealth are not. This figure does give a good idea of the magnitude of the Treasury Department’s actions. A multitude of industries, and companies received direct financial aid. The government identified key economic areas where policies were needed, and provided credit and liquidity for growth in those areas. The quick response of the Treasury Department helped in reducing the negative effects of the financial crisis. The three economic theories that I identified in this financial crisis consist of classical economics, Keynesian economics, and aggregate market (AS-AD) analysis. There was also a fear of monetarism which has not come to fruition at this time.

Numerous defaults, slump in the value of houses and mortgage finance securities, and shortage of liquidity in banks characterized the real estate and mortgage meltdown in the United States. The relative ease of credit, complexity of loans, and exuberance by people to procure loans fuelled the meltdown (Paul 2010). Sun, Stewart, and Pollard (2010) observe that policymakers, financial manipulators, and market speculators contributed to the meltdown. Competing needs among stakeholders also aggravated the meltdown. Mortgage finance firms, United States government, market investors, homebuyers, and shareholders also contributed towards the worsened meltdown (Sun, Stewart, & Pollard 2010.) The meltdown had disastrous economic and social consequences. Banking and non-banking financial institutions closed down while individual homeowners lost their houses via foreclosure. The fall in house prices resulted in investors incurring substantial losses. Banks closed due to liquidity challenges associated with default from loan borrowers. Closure of mortgage and financial institutions also led to massive unemployment. The meltdown had vital lessons, attributes, and roles to the real estate and mortgage participants.

During the mid-1990s, the US economy had maintained stable growth, low unemployment, and low inflation; it was the longest undisrupted growth period post- the Vietnam War, the Dot.com Boom, and the stock market crash of 1987. Therefore, many politicians, economists, and consumers were under the assumption that the economy was very stable. But in reality this growth period was a façade because it was built on mortgage-backed securities. Ultimately, since fragility does not change, mortgage-backed securities was one the main catalysts for the 2008 financial crisis, a crisis that is still affecting the country today. Throughout this paper, I hope to inform you about the causes and effects of mortgage-backed serecurties.

The 2008 financial crisis is complicated, as are its many causes, however it is clear that poor understanding and lack of regulation of securitization played a significant role in bringing about the crisis. The problems began when housing prices started to decline in 2006, resulting in an unexpected increase in mortgage defaults as homeowners found themselves owing more on their mortgage than their houses were worth. When mortgages began to default, the collateral on mortgage-backed securities lost its value, which resulted in the failure of banks, GSEs and funds that had invested heavily in mortgage backed securities, and another related offerings (Schulz). These failures scared investors who quickly tried to recoup their investment, which resulted in essentially a run on the shadow-banking system that had developed around the issuance of asset-backed securities and related financial innovations—and the rest of the crisis is well known history that need not be reviewed.

Trouble started in 2003 with the housing boom, mortgage interest rates had greatly decreased. As home prices rose, a low interest rate allowed for ‘affordable’ mortgage payments for all buyers. Investors, both foreign and domestic searched for investments that yielded low risk and average returns, their answer came in the form of mortgage backed securities. Investors and Wall Street firms