Causes of the 2008 US Recession

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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 because there have been a lot of bad practices and a lot of bad ideas". The 2007 financial crisis was composed of the fall of many major financial institutions, an unknown increase in mortgage loan defaults, and the derived freezing up of credit availability (Brue). It was the result from risky mortgage loans and falling estate values (Brue) . Additionally, the financial crisis of 2007 was the result of underestimation of risk by faulty insurance securities made to protect holders of mortgage-back securities from risk of default and holders of mortgage-backed securities (Brue). Even to present day, America stills suffers from the aftermaths of the financial crisis.

The Mortgage Default Crisis

A majority of mortgage defaults that Americans used were on subprime mortgage loans, which were high-interest-rate loans lent to people with high risk credit rates (Brue). Despite knowing the risks, the Federal government encouraged major banks to lend out these loans to buyers, in hopes, of broadening ho...

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