Is Wall Street responsible for the Financial Crisis? Corruption is rampant in our government. Many congressman and legislators are paid by Wall Street to help them deregulate the financial sector. The deregulation helps the big banks and investment houses make bigger profits, but hurts the little guys, the American people. The cause of the financial crisis can be traced back to this corruption in the banks and government that deregulated the banking industry and allowed risky practices on Wall Street that eventually hurt the American people and economy. Deregulation on Wall Street is mainly due to the corruption that can be found in the banks and our government. Numerous Senators in Congress have received large sums for their campaigns by Wall …show more content…
Without giving the banks more freedom in their investment practices, the financial crisis could have most likely been avoided. Their risky actions with the American people's’ money would have stopped before it started. However, through significant lobbying and corruption, Wall Street was able to gain more freedom in the financial markets. “Congress also passed legislation that… clarified that certain kinds of financial instruments were not regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission” (Gattuso, James L.). One of the financial instruments that were clarified to not be regulated were “credit default swaps,” which were one of the main instruments used by the banks that caused the crisis. It would be common sense to have all financial instruments under regulation so that risky practices can be controlled, but it seems legislation avoided common sense. “The Federal Reserve reports five major rule makings in the database since 1996—four of which were deregulatory. (Gattuso, James L.). A majority of this agencies’ rule changes were deregulatory, with any one of the changes giving the big banks a loophole or shortcut that makes them even more profitable. It seems like there is this pattern of deregulation leading up to the financial crisis. A pattern of more and more money pumped into political campaigns, more and more freedom on Wall Street, and eventually, the American people and its economy
The 1933 Banking Act, also known as the Glass-Steagall Act in reference to the legislation’s sponsors Carter Glass and Henry B. Steagall, was a statue enacted by the 73rd United States Congress which created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and separated investment banking from commercial banking. The act established clear delimitations between commercial and investment banks, and made it illegal for them to operate in conjunction. Federal Reserve member banks were banned from dealing in non-governmental securities for customers, underwriting or distributing non-governmental securities, investing in non-investment grade securities for themselves, and affiliating with companies involved in such activities. Concurrently, investment banks were prohibited from accepting deposits.
The shares values had fallen and this left people panicking. Many businesses closed and several of the banks did not last because of the businesses collapsing. Many people lost their jobs because of this factor. Congress passed Roosevelt’s Emergency Banking Act, which helped reorganize the banks and closed the ones that were insolvent. Then three days later he urged Americans to put their savings back in their banks and by the end of the month basically three quarters of them reopened. Many people refer to the Banking Act as the Glass Steagall Act that ended up prohibiting commercial banks from engaging in the investment business and created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. The purpose of this was to get rid of the speculations in securities making banking safer than before. The demand for goods were declining, so the value of the money was
The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act brought the most significant changes to financial regulation in the United States since the reform that followed the Great Depression. It made changes in the American financial regulatory environment that affect all federal financial regulatory agencies and almost every part of the nation’s financial services industry. Like Glass-Steagall, the legislation passed after the Great Depression, it sought to regulate the financial markets and make another economic crisis less likely. Banks were deregulated in 1999 by the Gramm-Leach-Biley Act, which repealed the Glass-Steagall Act and essentially allowed for the excessive risk taken on by banks that caused the most recent financial crisis. The Financial Stability Oversight Council was established through the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act and was created to address the systemic risks in the United States financial system and to improve coordination among financial regulators.
It all started with what became known as the first 100 days during which congress passed an unprecedented amount of legislation. First up was a banking holiday, for two days, every bank across the country was shut down and investigated. The well behaved banks were allowed to be reopened while the rest were put under government control. The government then put some broad restrictions over the banks while also creating the (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) FDIC which would act as insurance for banking deposits. These extreme measures were designed to restore American’s confidence in the banking system as well as restoring economic growth and
Major banks are cutting back on some of their legally permitted operations, such as- market making, and that has led to liquidity issues in the bond markets. Proprietary trading could become unregulated if more banking activities continue moving towards the shadow banking system. This would essentially defeat one of the main purposes of Volcker Rule. [d] The third major unintended consequence has been the degree by which the Federal Reserve has become the main regulator of the finance industry. In order to discourage future bailouts similar to the ones during the financial crisis, the Dodd-Frank Act limited the Fed’s emergency powers. However the liquidity and capital standards now imposed by Fed has purportedly become one of the most important regulatory developments of the Dodd-Frank Act.
The Banking Act of 1933 and 1935 was then formed to make the Federal Reserve responsible for monetary policies for banks, the stock market and many other businesses. The formation of this act caused investors to become more actively involved in the federal government as well as the citizens of America. The Glass-Steagall Act was also passed to regulate speculation. It restricted investors from excessively using bank credit to cause “artificial" rise in stock prices. It also made investors confident about putting their money into a less speculative market.
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.
This essay will examine the causes of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis (GFC) from a Marxist perspective. This paper will specifically examine and critique how Marx’s Theory of Crisis can be applied to understand and interpret the underlying structural causes of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis.
In 2008 the worst financial crisis since the great depression hit and left many people wondering who should be responsible. Many Americans supported the prosecution of Wall Street. To this day there have still not been any arrests of any executive on Wall Street for the financial collapse. Many analysts point out that greed of executives was one of the many factors in the crisis. I will talk about subprime loans, ill-intent, punishments, and white collar crime.
(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 who is actually to blame for this financial fiasco.
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...
Shortly after the financial crisis in 2008, many economists had to rethink their approach to the market. Everyone knew we had a panic because the stock market and the housing market collapsed. American economy was reaching to the bottom. Many people considered it as a second worst recession after the great the Great Depression. But what was the cause? Who were responsible for the crisis? What can we learn from this turmoil? In the recent New York Times Sunday magazine article, Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman offered his explanation for the causes and insight toward fixing the economy.
The Wall Street Crash and The Great Depression When the stock market collapsed on Wall Street on Tuesday, October 29, 1929, it sent financial markets worldwide into a tailspin with disastrous effects of the sand. The German economy was especially vulnerable since It was built out of foreign capital, mostly loans from America and was dependent on foreign trade. When those loans suddenly came due and when the world market for German exports dried up, the well oiled German industrial machinery quickly ground to a halt. As production levels fell, German workers were laid off. Along with this, banks failed throughout Germany.
The recent Global Financial Crisis (GFC) initially began with the collapse of credits and financial markets, which caused by the sub-prime mortgage crisis in the US in 2007. The sub-prime mortgages were given to high-risk lenders (with bad credit history) who were in danger of defaulting, which eventually caused a global credit crunch, where the banks were unwilling to lend to each other. In October 2008, the collapse of the major financial institutions and the crash of stock markets marked the peak of this global economic slowdown (Euromonitor International, 2008).
Steverman,B. and Bogoslaw, D. (2008) ‘The financial crisis blame game’, Business week, October [Online]. Available at: http://www.businessweek.com/investor/content/oct2008/pi20081017_950382.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index+-+temp_top+story (Accessed: 1st August 2010).