How The Financial Crisis Came About
In the pre-financial crisis of 2008, a lot of individuals were already feeling the strain brought by the the subprime mortgage crisis. Reckless borrowing by consumers along with unnecessary leveraging of Wallstreet brought the US to the brink. Some experts and analysts have made predictions of the crisis and the extent on how Wallstreet really messed up was the focus of everyone’s attention.
Bear Stearns is a global investment bank that was the first to go down where JPMorgan Chase saved it by acquiring it in March 2008. Then President Bush and his Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson, remained firm in the belief that the economic fundamentals of the country was still solid. Also that time, the White House was confining the matter to just the subprime mortgage sector.
The next significant institutions to fall are Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae which are two of the major US mortgage companies. trillion in taxpayer money was spent by the federal government to bail them out. The collapse of Wallstreet came about soonafter. In turn, the five pure investment banks in Wallstreet which consist of Merrill Lynch, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley, either dissolved or reduced to depository banks.
AIG,the world’s largest insurer, is said to fall next. There was too much riding on AIG to be allowed to suffer the same fate as the other institutions. If not, the consequences would result to a new great depression. The government considered it vital to bailout AIG since it has lots of tie to various institutions where money is pretty much wrapped around it. An billion bailout was given by the government to AIG officials to save itself and the bonuses AIG had given to some of its executives were strongly criticized.
The collapse of these institutions and the fall of the stock market were events mirroring that of what happened prior to the 1920s great depression and a lot of people believed that another great depression is on the horizon. Before the financial crisis in 2008, the housing bubble was fueled by easy money that also happened in the 1920s. The federal government had made it possible for nearly everyone to own their own home by giving a 1% rate on mortgage. Because of this, mortgages and other types of loans were easily approved by most banks across the country without doing some background checks. Plenty of loan applicants lie about how much money they make and only a credit rating will be asked. Even individuals who don’t have jobs were granted loans simply because this crucial information are not verified by lenders.
These risky loans were granted by lenders with extreme confidence because of a financing tool known as mortgage-backed securities. They resold their loans in bulk to banks in Wallstreet and banks in Wallstreet bundle these loans into higher yielding mortgage-backed securities and sold to investors around the globe. Investors who have procured these loans are known as “pooled risks” and because of this aspect it was thought that it will always be safe.
As we all know now, these were all a big mistake that dragged each and every individual from every corner of the world into financial difficulty. Job-losses, foreclosures, bankruptcies, debts, etc. are all the consequence of this human blunder. Now that the economies around the planet are slowly recovering from the aftermath, this should serve as an important lesson to all of us to not make the same mistakes once more.
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