During the pre-financial crisis of 2008, the foundations of the wider housing market is slowly but surely being toppled by the subprime mortgage crisis. Reckless borrowing by consumers along with excessive leveraging of Wallstreet brought the US to the brink. Everyone was shocked when the news broke out the focus of everyone's thought was the magnitude of how Wallstreet messed everything up.
The first to fall was global investment bank Bear Stearns where JPMorgan Chase saved it by absorbing it in March 2008. Henry Paulson, who was the treasury secretary at the time announced to the public that citizens don't have to worry because the country's economy stands firm. The government also informed the public that the problem is contained only within the subprime mortgage sector.
Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are two mortgage giants which next fell in August 2008. The Government decided to bail them out by spending trillion in taxpayer money. The collapse of Wallstreet came about soonafter. In turn, Wallstreet's five investment banks which include Merrill Lynch, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley, either dissolved or reduced to depository banks.
The world's largest insurer, AIG, was understood to be the next key financial body to fall. AIG was too valuable and letting it fall was unthinkable. Otherwise the consequences would result to another great depression. The government considered it necessary to bailout AIG because it has a lot of tie to many institutions where money is pretty much wrapped around it. Taxpayers were forced to pay billion to bailout the insurance giant.
The collapse of these institutions and the fall of the stock market were events mirroring that of what happened prior to the 1920s great depression and a lot of people believed that another great depression is on the horizon. Before the financial crisis in 2008, the housing bubble was fueled by easy money that also happened in the 1920s. The federal government had made it possible for nearly everyone to own their own home by giving a 1% rate on mortgage. Because of this, mortgages and other types of loans were easily approved by most banks across the country without doing some background checks. Plenty of loan applicants lie about how much money they make and only a credit rating will be asked. Even individuals who don't have jobs were granted loans simply because this crucial information are not verified by lenders.
Even though risky, plenty of lenders don't mind granting these loans because of a financing tool acknowledged as mortgage-backed securities. These loans were bulked and resold to banks in Wallstreet and Wallstreet banks bundle these loans into higher yielding mortgage-backed securities and sold to investors around the globe. Investors who have procured these loans are known as "pooled risks" and because of this point of view it was thought that it will always be safe.
As we all know now, these were all a big mistake that dragged each and every individual from every corner of the world into financial difficulty. Job-losses, foreclosures, bankruptcies, debts, etc. are all the consequence of this human blunder. Now that the economies around the planet are slowly recovering from the aftermath, this should serve as an important lesson to all of us to not make the same mistakes once more.
Steve Smith writes for All About Loans where visitors can apply for secured loans and also focuses on poor credit loans , in the UK and fast secured loans for UK Homeowners.
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