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The Federal Reserve and the Financial Crisis

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Running head: THE FEDERAL RESERVE AND THE FINANCIAL CRISIS

The Federal Reserve and the Financial Crisis
Laura Brotherton
Strayer University
Principles of Economics
ECO 100
Professor Isley
March 13, 2013

The Federal Reserve and the Financial Crisis
Government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) are financial services corporations established by Congress with the hope of enhancing the flow of credit to certain targeted sectors of the economy making them more efficient and transparent. They also intend to reduce the risk to investors and other suppliers of capital. GSE’s make homeownership more available by injecting liquidity into the mortgage market. The GSE purchases mortgages from banks which provide cash for those banks to make additional guaranteed loans to borrowers. Securitization is a financial practice of pooling various types of contractual debt such as mortgages, auto loans or credit card debt obligations and selling this debt as bonds, pass-through securities, or collateralized mortgage obligation (CMOs) to various investors. Principal and interest on the debt, underlying the security, is paid back to the various investors regularly. The complexity inherent in securitization can limit investors' ability to monitor risk, and that competitive securitization markets may be particularly prone to sharp declines in underwriting standards.
Bad mortgage products and practices are a trigger. Moreover, low interest loans allow more and more people to seemingly afford to purchase homes which over the course of a few years, starting around 2000, built enough momentum to trigger a mortgage crisis. Home prices must increase for adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs) to make sense for borrowers and lenders. The added equity would allow borrowers to avoid rate increases as each ARM matured by moving them into a fixed rate mortgage. Increase home

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