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2000-2006 Housing Bubble

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The issue of whom to blame for the 2000-2006 housing bubble has shifted from an economic to a political discussion. As with a lot of political issues, each party seems to think they know who’s to blame for issues within the U.S. economy. One theory states that through things like the Community Readjustment Act and the Affordable Housing mission, the government should receive the blame. Other economists believe that the U.S. government did its best in the to make the American Dream of owning a home more accessible to everyone, banks took advantage of reduced loaning standards and lent out money they knew individuals could never repay.
When it comes to the conservative opinion, individuals believe the federal government caused the housing bubble. …show more content…
Historically, banks have had no issue battling overly regulative government policy. One saw this when the financial industry lobbied and eventually got the Glass-Steagall Act repealed over 60 years after implementation. The government implemented the Glass-Steagall Act in the 1930’s post-Great Depression in order to stop banks from engaging in the investment business. Bill Clinton eventually signed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act which overturned the Glass-Steagall Act, but this essentially lead to “the rise of several very large banks … with business lines that cut across both commercial lending and securities business … those … banks alone have combined assets of about $6.05 trillion or 36 percent of United States’ gross domestic product.” This explains one example where members of the financial industry rebeled against government policy to accomplish their institutional …show more content…
In their attempt to increase the availability and affordability of housing they essentially did the opposite. They did make loans and mortgages more accessible, but they also gave people the ability to gain approval for loans they clearly could not afford. The 1977 CRA began the real damage to the housing market and shortly after came the relaxed standards of mortgages of the Affordable Housing Initiative. While home ownership rose to new heights, so did the defaulting on loans and the drastic decrease of the Federal Reserve Rate. This decrease allowed banks to take out money at a lower cost thus encouraging them to loan it out at the reduced standards. With that came the increased use of leveraging and ARMs, which ultimately caused the spike in housing prices that the majority of families’ incomes could not sustain. This shows how the U.S. government indirectly caused the 2000-2006 housing

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