...Supply and Demand Name University of Phoenix Supply and Demand People who are planning to buy a new house should first be well informed about the status of their new locality’s real estate market. The housing market is strongly governed by certain economic conditions, and understanding the economic trend will allow interested buyers to wisely choose the best price for their new house. It is also an established fact that the business conditions can also influence the real estate market; however, the huge aspect that will truly affect housing prices is still the law of supply and demand. The principle of supply and demand is an economic principle that is applicable to all commodities whether material or immaterial. It is a principle that establishes the relationship between the price of the product to its availability and supply. So for example, if there is a high demand for a product that currently has low supply, the tendency is for the prices to be higher since there is the security of the market that can support the price imposed. On the other hand, if the demand for a certain product is low, but the supply is high, then its price will naturally decrease simply because of its high availability in the market (Mankiw, 2004). The homebuilding industry originally started out of the human needs to have stable and hardened shelters that can provide them with long term protection and comfort, especially when they are already starting to...
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...The Subprime Mortgage Crisis and What to Do about It A Review of the Literature The fuse for the subprime financial shock was set early in this decade, following the tech-stock bust, September 11th, and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. The subprime mortgage crisis is a historic turning point in our economy and our culture. The disruption in our credit markets is already of historic proportions and will have important economic impacts. More importantly, this crisis has set in motion fundamental societal changes – changes that affect our consumer habits, our values, our confidence to the future, and our psychological status. After this financial crisis, our economic went downturns and worsen now. When we talk about or hear about the subprime mortgage crisis, to fully understand the crisis help us to avoid the crisis happening again in the future. This literature review considers different opinions of the subprime mortgage crisis by responding to the following questions: 1. What are subprime mortgages? 2. How did the subprime mortgage crisis happen? 3. What are the causes of the subprime mortgage crisis? 4. Was the subprime mortgage crisis in the U.S. totally unexpected? 5. What to do to avoid it happening again in the future? By answering these questions, we can have understandings of the subprime mortgage crisis and find out the solutions to the crisis. When Americans taking advantage of the easy credit conditions, we take for granted the problems behind the credit...
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...Global Financial Crisis: Likely Impact on Bangladesh [Abstract: The current financial crisis that originated in the United States and quickly spread to Europe and Asia could be a global crisis soon. Reckless lending by banks and financial institutions and slack regulatory system were at the root of the crisis, which is perhaps the gravest since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Amid a severe credit crunch, the rich economies have entered into a deep recession. IMF economists predict the global economic growth to fall from 5.6% in 2007 to 3.9% in 2008, and to 3.0% next year. Billions of dollars pumped by the rich and the emerging economies to bail out the distressed banks or to boost their economies have failed to stop the rot. Bangladesh is apparently immune from the crisis, its economy not being very tightly linked with the rest of the world. It has been enjoying a relatively healthy growth of exports, industrial activity and remittances. Yet, a prolonged recession in the rich countries may cause a slowdown in exports, inflows of remittances, foreign aid and FDI, thereby hurting GDP growth. IMF has said that GDP growth in Bangladesh this year will be lower – 5.5% instead of the officially projected 6.5%, if the global recession lingers. Bangladesh policy makers will need to stay alert to the possibility of the economy being hit by the global slump and adopt appropriate mitigating measures.] Introduction The United States economy is now experiencing a severe credit...
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...2008 FINANCIAL CRISIS Name Course Date 1. Background The financial crisis commenced in August 2007 after the preceding inflation. The crisis became more defined throughout 2007 and gained momentum in 2008. This took place even after the financial regulators and the central banks’ tireless attempts to tame the situation. It is alleged that the main factors that influenced its manifestation include corruption, fraud, speculation, greed, bankers and bankers’ bonuses. However, the academic discourse, politics or media has been unable to solve the mystery surrounding the main causes of the crisis[1]. The mystery is academically relevant to the world of research just like the Great Depression, whose causes are still being discussed. Other sources believe that the crisis might have been as a cause of human failures especially following the refusal to bail out the Investment Bank Lehman Brothers. The housing bubble was the immediate trigger of the 2008 financial crisis. The following were the triggers under the housing bubble. I. Subprime lending A subprime mortgage is the mortgage that is readily acceptable without imposing strict measures of standard on it. Before the 2008 financial crisis, there existed a fierce competition between mortgage lenders. The competition between the mortgage lenders ensued from the struggle for market share and revenue. It also took place in tandem with limited supply of creditworthy borrowers which put unconditional stress...
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...Running Head: CLEAN UP THE HOUSE 1 Clean Up the House: An Analysis of the Housing Crisis and the Endeavor to Lift the US Housing Market Neil Smith Wilmington University MBA 6400 Economic and Financial Environment of Business CLEAN UP THE HOUSE 2 ABSTRACT This is an inquiry of the Housing Crisis that culminated to the Great Recession of 2007-2009. A review of the aspects that led to the Housing Crisis will be considered. The causes that contributed to the Housing Crisis will range from the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 to the greed and voracity that engulfed the Financial Markets. Such greed maligned the financial markets causing eventual bailouts and measures that the US Federal Government employed to avert a major financial depression. This paper will discuss definite recommendations that will improve the US Housing Market. CLEAN UP THE HOUSE 3 Clean Up the House: An Analysis of the Housing Crisis and the Endeavor to Lift the US Housing Market In today’s world it is generally accepted that a home is the most expensive thing that any American can buy. The idea of home ownership - a chance to own a home - is a dream fulfilled for many. To have a piece of property and call it your own is reflected...
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...2008 FINANCIAL CRISIS Name Course Date 1. Background The financial crisis commenced in August 2007 after the preceding inflation. The crisis became more defined throughout 2007 and gained momentum in 2008. This took place even after the financial regulators and the central banks’ tireless attempts to tame the situation. It is alleged that the main factors that influenced its manifestation include corruption, fraud, speculation, greed, bankers and bankers’ bonuses. However, the academic discourse, politics or media has been unable to solve the mystery surrounding the main causes of the crisis[1]. The mystery is academically relevant to the world of research just like the Great Depression, whose causes are still being discussed. Other sources believe that the crisis might have been as a cause of human failures especially following the refusal to bail out the Investment Bank Lehman Brothers. The housing bubble was the immediate trigger of the 2008 financial crisis. The following were the triggers under the housing bubble. I. Subprime lending A subprime mortgage is the mortgage that is readily acceptable without imposing strict measures of standard on it. Before the 2008 financial crisis, there existed a fierce competition between mortgage lenders. The competition between the mortgage lenders ensued from the struggle for market share and revenue. It also took place in tandem with limited supply of creditworthy borrowers which put unconditional stress...
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...org Julapa Jagtiani Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia Ten Independence Mall, Philadelphia, PA 19106 Phone: 215-574-7284 E-mail: Julapa.Jagtiani@phil.frb.org February 9, 2010 Abstract This paper discusses the role of risk management and corporate governance as causal factors in the onset of the financial crisis. The downturn in the housing and mortgage markets precipitated the first phase of the financial crisis in August 2007 when the solvency of a number of large financial firms was threatened by huge losses in complex structured financial securities. Why did these firms have such high concentrations in mortgage-related securities? Given the information available to firms at the time, these high concentrations in mortgage-related securities violated basic principles of modern risk management. We argue that this failure was a result of principal-agent problems internal to the firms and to breakdowns of corporate governance systems designed to overcome these principal-agent problems. Forthcoming in Atlantic Economic Journal (2010) JEL Classification Numbers: G01, G18, G21, G28 Keywords: Financial Crisis, Risk Management, Corporate Governance, Subprime Crisis _________________________ The opinions expressed in this paper are the authors’ and not necessarily those of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia or the Federal Reserve System. Thanks to Ali Canoni and Vidya Nayak for their research assistance. The Mortgage and Financial Crises: The Role of...
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...observed what is being labeled the world financial crisis since the Great Depression of 1920-30. The initial indication of a severe financial melt-down appeared in October 9, 2007 when the Dow Jones Industrial Average set a record by closing at 14,047. One year later, the Dow was just above 8,000, after dropping 21% in the first nine days of October 2008. Major stock markets in other countries had plunged alongside the Dow. Credit markets were nearing paralysis. Companies began to lay off workers in droves and were forced to put off capital investments. Individual consumers were being denied loans for mortgages and college tuition. After the nine-day U.S. stock market plunge, the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had some sobering words: “Intensifying solvency concerns about a number of the largest U.S.-based and European financial institutions have pushed the global financial system to the brink of systemic meltdown.” It has been maintained that huge economy inequalities coupled with low rate of profit in the US economy contributed to an increased capital flow to the financial sector and the increasing provision of credit to US workers whose real incomes had declined. Under auspices of financial innovations, debt was sold in complex new financial products to investors. Cheap and apparently riskless lending drove the rising leverage of investments. ‘Securitization’ helped to spread the risks to global financial markets and deficient government regulation facilitated...
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...of the key macro and micro economics factors which impact on the current UK housing market Introduction This paper explores the current situation in the UK housing market. Fundamentally, the paper argues that the current situation in the housing market is a legacy of the way in which the housing market developed over the early 2000s into the 2007 and 2008 financial crisis. As the fall out from this crisis has taken two or three years to properly be felt it can currently be said to be exerting a major influence on the way the housing market in the UK is working today. The paper therefore places a major focus on developing an understanding of how the financial crisis occurred and the impact that this had on the UK housing market, in order to understand the key factors which are shaping the housing market today. The paper begins with a look at the state of the UK economy at the moment. This is only examined in brief but provides a key background to the work. This is then followed by a look at the UK economy and the housing market and how the two link together. The following section is the major section of the work as this focuses on the macroeconomic factors which have shaped the housing market. This section in particular focuses on the legacy of the housing market developments of the early 2000s. The following section briefly explores the microeconomic elements which have shaped the housing market – the major emphasis here is on the role of buy to let mortgages as a means of investing...
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...yielded higher returns than government bonds (Fligstein and Habinek, 2011). When the American mortgage market broke down it quickly spread to other countries, and the global financial crisis was a fact. In this paper I will start off by explaining the background for the mortgage crisis in the US. Afterwards I will try to elaborate how this could spread across the world and make the crisis global. Finally I will discuss why this crisis has been so slow in resolving itself since many countries still struggle in the aftermath of the crisis. My thesis is that: The decline in investment opportunities in several countries in the European Union caused investors in some of the richest countries to buy mortgage backed securities from the US. When these mortgage backed securities defaulted, the crisis turned global. The American mortgage crisis: When the American banking sector gradually got deregulated during the 80s and 90s, the banks came up with new and creative ways to reach out to new costumers. Basically it is conventional economic wisdom to not lend out money to people with bad financial credibility, but an innovation in financial alchemy changed this. By the early 1990s investment banks realized that mortgages could be gathered, packaged and sold as profitable bonds in an assumingly huge market. Securitization made consumers get mortgages cheap and easy, so the market for mortgage-backed securities grew at a fast rate alongside increased housing prices (Fligstein and Goldstein...
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...the events happened in Wall Street during 2008 US financial crisis. There is a scene in the movie that explained the reasons behind the crisis, which attracts my interest. Then I found and watched another short video, “Credit Crisis”. It takes only 11 minutes to visually illustrate the reasons behind the credit crisis in the United States. After watching it, I have gotten the answers of these questions. What is credit crisis? How did it happen? And who is affected? This credit crisis is also called the subprime crisis. The reason of the subprime crisis can generally be described as follows. In 2001, Federal Reserve lowered the interest rate to keep the economy strong, which not only made the treasury bill became uninteresting to investors but also lower the cost of borrowing money. So investors borrowed a huge amount of money and used “leverage” to make more money. They created a “novel” way to make money by purchasing and selling CDO (collateralized debt obligation). At the beginning, the mortgages were only given to people with good credit records and strong ability of repayment. Everything was good until the occurrence of sub-prime. Include house owners, lenders, bankers and other financial institutes, everybody gained in the process of selling CDOs. In order to sell as many mortgages as possible and make more money, the mortgages were started to give to people who actually don’t have the ability to buy a house. The time bombs were buried here. Actually, the lenders and...
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...SUBPRIME MORTGAGE CRISIS The beginning of 2000s, commodity, especially “petrol” and agricultural products prices was soared unexpectedly. Economic growth of high population countries such as India and China raised demand of agricultural and merchandise products and thus, this demand caused increasing of these products prices. In 2008, not only food prices but also gold and petrol prices reached the highest level in history. On the other hand, while these prices was increasing, the value of the United States Dollar fell than almost all currency units. It was paralelled that the market of real estate particularly “housing prices” decreased a great value in the US in 2006. Hovewer, housing prices started to increase gradually early 2000s in the US because of mortgage. Due to the this increment, banks provided credits to their low income family in order to purchase a new house, but when housing prices fell into decline suddenly, a new credit market which is called subprime mortgage collapsed. In 2006, home mortgage foreclosures were at record highs. From 2006 to 2007 foreclosures fillings grew 75 percent and leaving more than 1 percent of all households in some stage of foreclosure. Foreclosures in the subprime mortgage market were leading the way. In the end of 2006, about 300,000 foreclosure proceedings were initiated, with subprime mortgages accounting for more than half. Majority of these subprime borrowers were low and moderate...
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...HOUSING BUBBLE AND ITS IMPACT ON GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS (2007) Housing bubble or real estate bubble is one of the basic problems that lead to global financial crisis in the late 2000s. When people’s wealth substantially increased, they will spend or consume more on everything, including houses. People demand for a better and bigger homes until in the late 90s, consumption boom occurred. The increased in demand has triggered housing bubble and makes the bubble became bigger. When demand on houses increased, of course the prices would be increased too. Until some point, the demand decreases or becomes stagnant, but the supply is still increasing, it will lead to sharp drop in the houses’ prices. At this point the bubble burst. Basically, the main reason that triggered the bubble and made it bigger was the policies of the Federal Reserve back in 2003. Referring to the reason, to avoid recession after the collapse of the tech bubble in 2000 and the 9/11 attacks in U.S during 2001, the Federal Reserve started to lower the interest rate from 6.5% to 1.75%. In 2003, the interest rate has been lowered to 1% and it remained there for a full year. However, the house prices were still growing up, higher than the interest rate. Even the house prices were growing at the rate of inflation, the Federal then encouraged people to buy houses. Federal has made an incentive so that people can go out and borrow at the rate of 1%. In addition, they created Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, a privately...
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...Abstract Although the financial meltdown of 2008 can be tied to the collapse of the mortgage industry due to sub-prime mortgages and mortgage backed securities, it rapidly became a worldwide crisis. The decisions that were made and implemented to try to provide stability in the economy and prevent disruption in the financial system failed miserably and led to the worst economic recession since 1929. This paper will take a look at the weeks of financial turmoil that shook the world’s financial system. America’s falling dollar and mounting international debt are not, as pundits often declare, the wages of profligacy and sin. They are the inevitable products of dysfunctional international financial arrangements – a system that now appears likely to come crashing down, with alarming implications for the American economy. (Aliber 1) This is a very prophetic statement in an article written in 2005 by Dr. Robert Aliber. Dr. Aliber is a Professor Emeritus of International Economics and Finance at the University of Chicago and is widely known for his theory of foreign direct investment. The credit crisis that shook the world’s financial system, which long ago moved beyond its origins in subprime mortgages, began to accelerate in September, 2008. On September 7, 2008, the US Treasury seized control of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and pledged a $200 billion cash injection to help the companies cope with mortgage default losses. Although privately owned, Fannie...
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...A period of economic difficulty that consumers and markets are experiencing world-widely is known as global financial crisis (BusinessDictionary, 2015). It occurs when there is an increase in asymmetric information coming from disruptions in financial system that is interrupting the funds from channelling efficiently between savers and households as well as preventing firms from having productive investment opportunities (Mishkin and Eakins, 2012, pp. 204). The recent global financial crisis began in the year of 2007 and the intensity increased in the subsequent year. Global financial crisis in 2007 happened as result of a number of factors such as government mandated subprime lending, imprudent mortgage lending, housing bubble, securitization and a few other more factors, which will be discussed. Causes The government mandated subprime lending has contributed to the financial crisis by promoting affordable housing under Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) as well as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Through affordable housing, banks were encouraged to participate in imprudent mortgage lending as mandated by the federal in order to help low-income borrowers, which imprudent mortgage lending is another cause that contributed to the global financial crisis (Jickling, 2009). As a result of mortgage lending, low-income families are able to purchase houses that they are not be able to afford to purchase without the policy. The loans require low or no down payments and limited documentation...
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