In the film The Big Short banks fail because of what is known as Collateralized Debt Obligation (CDO). Centered around these CDOs, the mortgage market fails which generated wealth for many of the characters inside the film. The mess of the CDOs was created by everyone who was involved in this process including homeowners, lenders, central banks, and credit rating agencies. Recently, there seems to be a rise in new CDOs which may lead to the same end. Collateralized Debt Obligations are what banks use to repackage individual loans such as auto loans, credit card debt, mortgages or corporate debt, to sell to investors on a secondary market. In the case of mortgages, these CDOs are known as mortgaged backed securities (MBS). Rather than directly lending mortgages to individuals, small banks act as middlemen to facilitate the exchange between investment markets and the individual. These CDOs are separated into what is known as tranches, or portions, each with their own rating. The ratings range from AAA to AA to BB to unrated tranches. The …show more content…
Unlike most other bonds, the mortgaged backed securities were made up of a bunch of bonds pooled together. Because of that, the rate at which the failure of these bonds were not suspected to be high as a couple failing would not likely result in the failures of the rest. It was believed that a mass failure would not happen. This is where Credit Default Swaps (CDS) come in. Similar to insurance policies, CDSs are bought to insure CDOs in case of failure. Up until the failure occurs, the buyer of these swaps are required to pay a premium. In turn, one of the causes of the financial crisis is the lack of regulation and lack of risk-detection that occurred in these subprime, or below good quality, loans. The banks lost in the end; however, they were bailed out by the
Collateral for the defaulted loan. Distressed real estate involves making a distressed purchase. According to Financial Crisis (2011), “[A] distressed purchase is whereby the property owners are usually in a foreclosure/short sale situation.” Foreclosure applies to a residential real estate loan in which a bank or creditor repossesses a home because of nonpayment. The institution will legally possess the right to resell the property as collateral for the defaulted loan. The selling price can be sold at a price equal to or greater than the original loan. The reason distressed properties can be bought at a lower price is the institution has already received a series of payments toward the original home loan. In many situations the lender can sell the house for a lower cost than the normal market value, leaving the buyer the opportunity to make a purchase at a lower selling price than market value and reselling the property at a profit (Demand Media, 2011).
The reality of the worst financial crisis in the last 80 years has led to wide speculation of its causes. While a plethora of theories have been offered, none have been as persistent and as patently false as the assertion that the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 played a significant role in the housing bubble collapse. Critics of the Community Investment Act (CRA) argue that by pushing banks to meet the credit needs of low-income borrowers, the law forced lending institutions to take on riskier loans that proved to be fiscally irresponsible. The securitization and speculation of these low quality loans led to the housing bubble collapse and the wider financial crisis. This argument is subject to a number of problems, namely: the CRA never mandated lower lending standards, the CRA was enacted over a quarter of a century before the housing crash took place, none of the hundreds of banks that collapsed were subject to CRA legislation, CRA loans had a historically low level of default, and CRA loans comprised an extremely low amount of subprime loans during the relevant period of the crisis. While the CRA may have played some small part in the collapse of the housing bubble and subsequent financial crisis, it is clear that its effect was negligible. There are simply too many mitigating factors that limit the extent to which the CRA could have adversely affected the housing market for the theory to be plausible.
Leading up to the crisis of the housing market, borrowers got mortgages without understanding the terms. Banks were giving out loans to people the banks weren't sure could pay the money back. The closer to the crisis, the higher the frequency of illegitimate loans and mortgages. Because there were so many mortgages on houses that could not be paid back, millions of mortgages were foreclosed on, and the houses we...
The presence of systemic risk in the current United States financial system is undeniable. Systemic risks exist when the failure of one firm may topple others and destabilize the entire financial system. The firm is then "too big to fail," or perhaps more precisely, "too interconnected to fail.” The Federal Stability Oversight Council is charged with identifying systemic risks and gaps in regulation, making recommendations to regulators to address threats to financial stability, and promoting market discipline by eliminating the expectation that the US federal government will come to the assistance of firms in financial distress. Systemic risks can come through multiple forms, including counterparty risk on other financial ...
Although the crisis came to head in 2008, there were people who had realized that trouble was coming for years. The largest warning sign was the amount of credit in the market place. Many of the big companies and banks had very little capital, and the lack of capital was brought on by the housing bubble. Companies were lending too much money to people who could not pay them back. And even before people started to default on their mortgages, people could see that this was a problem. During a meeting with the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs in January 2007 the staff of the Federal Reserve admitted “that they were aware of [the] problem in the housing issue three years earlier” (Dodd). And they were not the only ones. As far back as 2001 there were people who saw the danger that sub-prime mortgages were and who were trying to have bills passed to stop the bad lending that was going on, but no one wanted to list...
damaged credit, the companies are taking a financial risk by financing them. Considering that for
Investment banks, Rating agencies and Insurance companies are key components of the financial market. In this presentation, I’m going to explain how these three key roles worked together to create the 2008 financial crisis.
The "subprime crises" was one of the most significant financial events since the Great Depression and definitely left a mark upon the country as we remain upon a steady path towards recovering fully. The financial crisis of 2008, became a defining moment within the infrastructure of the US financial system and its need for restructuring. One of the main moments that alerted the global economy of our declining state was the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers on Sunday, September 14, 2008 and after this the economy began spreading as companies and individuals were struggling to find a way around this crisis. (Murphy, 2008) The US banking sector was first hit with a crisis amongst liquidity and declining world stock markets as well. The subprime mortgage crisis was characterized by a decrease within the housing market due to excessive individuals and corporate debt along with risky lending and borrowing practices. Over time, the market apparently began displaying more weaknesses as the global financial system was being affected. With this being said, this brings into question about who is actually to assume blame for this financial fiasco. It is extremely hard to just assign blame to one individual party as there were many different factors at work here. This paper will analyze how the stakeholders created a financial disaster and did nothing to prevent it as the credit rating agencies created an amount of turmoil due to their unethical decisions and costly mistakes.
The subprime mortgage crisis is an ongoing event that is affecting buyers who purchased homes in the early 2000s. The term subprime mortgage refers to the many home loans taken out during a housing bubble occurring on the US coast, from 2000-2005. The home loans were given at a subprime rate, and have now lead to extensive foreclosures on home loans, and people having to leave their homes because they can not afford the payments. (Chote) The cause and effect of this crisis can be broken down into five major reasons.
In previous years the big financial institutions that are “too big to fail” have come to realize that they can “cheat” the system and make big money on it by making poor decisions and knowing that they will be bailed out without having any responsibly for their actions. And when they do it they also escape jail time for such action because of the fear that if a criminal case was filed against any one of the so called “too big to fail” financial institutions it...
Mortgage loans are a substantial form of revenue for the financial industry. Mortgage loans generate billions of dollars in the financial industry. It is no secret that companies have the ability to make a lot of money by offering a variety of mortgage loan products. The problem was not mortgage loans but that mortgage companies were using unethical behavior to get consumer mortgage loans approved. Unfortunately, the Countrywide Financial case was not an isolated case. Many top name mortgage companies have been guilty of unethical behavior. Just as the American housing market was starting to recover from its worst battering since the Great Depression, a new scandal, an epidemic of flawed or fraudulent mortgage documents, threatens to send not just the housing market but the entire economy back into a tailspin (Nation, 2010).
Debt capital refers to money borrowed. Examples of this include bonds and short-term commercial paper. Bonds are more widely used because it provides a company with years to come up with the principal while paying interest only. Bonds are rated (i.e. AAA, AA, BB, etc.), these ratings correspond to the risk of default. The higher the rating, the lower likelihood of default and therefore a lower interest rate accepted by the lender. Short-term commercial paper is typically...
Many of the “Elite” financial figures could not give a definite answer about why this crisis occurred as well as stated by many of the people interviewed, “We don’t know how it happened.” Many young brokers working for JP Morgan back in the middle of the 90’s believed they could come up with a way to cut risk, credit derivatives. Credit Derivatives are just a way of using other methods to separate and transfer risk to someone else other than the vender and free up capital. They tested their experiment with Exxon Mobile who were facing millions of dollars in damage for the Valdez Oil Spill back in 1989 by extending their line of credit. This also gave birth to credit default swaps (CDS) which a company wants to borrow money from someone who will buy their bond and pay the buyer back with interest over time. Once the JP Morgan and Exxon Mobile credit default swap happened, others followed in their path and the CDS began booming throughout the 90’s. The issue was that many banks in...
Catastrophe bonds are a new type of insurance securitization and have become increasingly popular in the insurance industry throughout the 21st century. Unlike traditional reinsurance products, cat bonds are “fixed income instruments issued primarily by insurers and reinsurers as a way of passing on their exposure to potential large financial risks associated with natural catastrophes” (Ip). in the form of an insurance linked security. These securities are designed to protect insurers and reinsurers against “super” catastrophes, or events that are high severity, but low frequency of occurrence, defined as having around a 1% or 1 in 100 years probability. Cat bonds first emerged in the 1990s, after hurricane Andrew and the Northridge Earthquake in California wiped approximately USD 30 billion off balance sheets of insurers and reinsurers. Insurers and reinsurers noticed the industry’s vulnerability to such “super” catastrophes. “The potential cost of a disaster had outgrown the capacity of the insurance industry to protect against it” (Ip). Reinsurers had to increase equity levels in order to protect against a natural disaster which increased the price for catastrophe risk. Although catastrophe bonds have parameters which strictly limit the type and location of a disaster they cover, cat bonds have had a positive impact on the insurance industry because cat bonds add reinsurance capacity through the financial market, cat bonds influence the price of traditional reinsurance, and cat bonds enable regional insurance carriers to expand underwriting.
Home loans, or mortgages, use a borrower's home for collateral. This home can be a single-family house up to four-unit property, as well as condominium or cooperative unit. Lenders fund home loan, but both the lender themselves and broker who act on behalf of the lenders originate.