Vernon L. Smith, a Nobel Prize Laureate in economics and a graduate from Harvard talked about the housing bubble and the bank balance sheets as important issues in the Great Recession. Here are some notes of what he proposed:
This is a macroeconomic problem.
Proposition #1: The Great Recession (2007-2009) as a Household/Bank Balance Sheet Crisis:
Housing is the most instable component. It gave a new perspective for research that economists did not have. In the Great Recession the housing decreased more than anything. From 1997 to 2005 a momentum (the rate of acceleration of a security's price or volume, Investopedia) was driven. In 1997 no more capital gains taxes on houses up to half million dollars. The Bubble started in 1991.
Proposition #2: Disequilibrium in the Great Depression (1930-1940) as a Household/Bank Balance Sheet Crisis:
Disequilibrium in the Depression was fueled by a massive flow mortgage credit.
There was too much OPM (“Other People's Money”) that tripled from 1921 to 1940. Decline in value against fixed debt was large, but less severe than in Great Recession.
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Just as the great depression, a booming economy had been experienced before the global financial crisis. The economy was growing at a faster rtae bwteen 2001 and 2007 than in any other period in the last 30 years (wade 2008 p23). An vast amount of subprime mortgages were the backbone to the financial collapse, among several other underlying issues. As with the great depression, there would be a number of factors that caused such a devastating economic
The dual stock market rise and fall and the real estate bubbles of the 1920s and 2000s were very similar. The decade during the 1920s marked the flourishing of modern mass-production, mass-consumption economy, which delivered unprecedented profits to investors while also raising the living standard of the urban middle- and working-class. The 2000s marketed the development of the new e-commerce economy, which delivered high earnings for investors during IPOs of some of the biggest tech companies such as Google and Yahoo. According the US Census, home ownership rates in this country rose rom 47.8% in 1930 to 66.2% to nearly 70%in 2006. (US Census)
The Great Depression and the Great Recession of the early 21st Century have many things in common. The Great Depression and the Great Recession both experienced good economic times before they crashed. Prior to the Great Depression, (1921-1929) the annual real economic growth was at 4.4 percent. Though less, the annual real economic growth prior to the Great Recession was at 3.2 percent. The banks before both times moved into new business lines. In the 1920s banks increased real estate lending and also increased investment banking. Prior to the Great Recession, (1990s-2000s) banks increased real estate lending and the securitization of mortgages. In both times, they were preceded by the innovations in consumer finances of their times. Prior to the Great Depression, (1920s) installment in consumer credit became more popular this included monthly payments. In the 2000’s prior to the recession, banks increased real estate lending and the securitization of mortgages. Pre Great Depression and the Great Recession they were asset bubbles in both real estate and tech-stock market. During the 1920s there was a surge in the Florida real estate as well as the stock market. The time during the 1990s and 2000s were a little different because of the fact that the tech stock market also took off and that the residential real estate grew.
“The Stock Market Crash was the most devastating in history. After World War I it was a period of peace and the crash interrupted it.” (“The Wall Street”). The public demanded deposits from the banks and as they were handing the cash over little did they know it was leading to less money in circulation. Companies closed down because of deflation and low demand while others laid off over half of their workers. As the unemployment levels increased, properties were repossessed and citizens started mortgaging their houses and selling everything just to get through the depression with their own home. Post war time the United States was booming, with the trade from Germany and Europe. The 1920’s turned out to be a decade, which lead America into the depression. As more and more people invested their money, the stock prices raised. “A multitude of large bank loans that could not be liquidated, and an economic recession that had begun earlier in the summer.” (“American
The economic business cycle of the world is its own living and breathing entity expanding and contracting with imprecise balances involving supply and demand. The expansions and contractions also known as booms and recessions support a delicate equilibrium of checks and balances, employment and unemployment. The year 1929 marked the beginning of the downward spiral of this delicate economic balance known as The Great Depression of the United States of America. The Great Depression is by far the most significant economic event that occurred during the twentieth century making other depressions pale in comparison. As a result, it placed the world’s political and economic systems into a complete loss of credibility. What transforms an ordinary recession or business cycle into an authentic depression is a matter of dispute, which caused trepidation among economic theorists. Some claim the depression was the result of an extraordinary succession of errors in monetary procedure. Historians stress structural factors such as massive bank failures and the stock market crash; economists hold responsible monetary factors such as the Federal Reserve’s actions when they contracted the currency distribution, and Britain's attempt to return their Gold Standard to pre-World War parities. Subsequently, there are the theorists such as the monetarists, who presume that it began as a normal recession, however many policy errors by the monetary establishment forced a reduction in the money supply, which worsened the economic condition, thereby turning the normal recession into the Great Depression. Others speculate that it was a failure of the free market or a failure of the government in their efforts to regulate interest rates, slow the occ...
It can be argued that the economic hardships of the great recession began when interest rates were lowered by the Federal Reserve. This caused a bubble in the housing market. Housing prices plummeted, home prices plummeted, then thousands of borrowers could no longer afford to pay on their loans (Koba, 2011). The bubble forced banks to give out homes loans with unreasonably high risk rates. The response of the banks caused a decline in the amount of houses purchased and “a crisis involving mortgage loans and the financial securities built on them” (McConnell, 2012 p.479). The effect on the economy was catastrophic and caused a “pandemic” of foreclosures that effected tens of thousands home owners across the U.S. (Scaliger, 2013). The debt burden eventually became unsustainable and the U.S. crisis deepened as the long-term effect on bank loans would affect not only the housing market, but also the job market.
subprime mortgages were major factors of the collapse of the 2007-2009 economy collapse. All of America suffered from the 2008 recession.
Post the era of World War I, of all the countries it was only USA which was in win win situation. Both during and post war times, US economy has seen a boom in their income with massive trade between Europe and Germany. As a result, the 1920’s turned out to be a prosperous decade for Americans and this led to birth of mass investments in stock markets. With increased income after the war, a lot of investors purchased stocks on margins and with US Stock Exchange going manifold from 1921 to 1929, investors earned hefty returns during this time epriod which created a stock market bubble in USA. However, in order to stop increasing prices of Stock, the Federal Reserve raised the interest rate sof loanabel funds which depressed the interest sensitive spending in many industries and as a result a record fall in stocks of these companies were seen and ultimately the stock bubble was finally burst. The fall was so dramatic that stock prices were even below the margins which investors had deposited with their brokers. As a reuslt, not only investor but even the brokerage firms went insolvent. Withing 2 days of 15-16 th October, Dow Jones fell by 33% and the event was referred to Great Crash of 1929. Thus with investors going insolvent, a major shock was seen in American aggregate demand. Consumer Purchase of durable goods and business investment fell sharply after the stock market crash. As a result, businesses experienced stock piling of their inventories and real output fell rapidly in 1929 and throughout 1930 in United States.
During the 1940's which would be the World War II and great depression era, there was an increase in debt. This was because of all the funding that went towards the war and New Deal policies. I...
When credit was created in the 1920’s people were just introduced to more money and more time. Then they started buying more and more. They were able to buy more due to credit or instalment plans. Credit lets you buy something for a certain amount but then you have to continuously pay for while you still own it. So, people bought even more with credit. This may seem like not too much of a big deal but these people didn't understand the consequences with overspending and credit. Some reasons why there was overspending are and stocks became popular, World War one previously ended, and they had more time and money than ever before.
The causes of the Great Recession all started as hundreds of billions of dollars was given to the United States abroad and financiers conceiving were to make a profit and what better way but the real estate market. Since the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 and an expansion made in 1995 the than President Bush endorsed the program that created Option adjustable rate mortgages (nick-named “Pick-A-Pay”) to allow for bank to sell these options even though they were high risk (Conservapedia, 2013). The Community Reinvestment Act of 1977/95 is defined as to framework financial institutions, state and local governments, and community organizations to jointly promote banking services in the community” (Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, n.d.). That being said, there were three individuals, and firms that contributed the most to the recession including Senator Charles Schumer D-NY, Fannie Mae, American Ins...
] This catastrophic event is caused by the accumulation of a large scale of speculation by not only investors but also banks and institutions in the stock market. Though the unemployment rate was climbing during the 1920s and economy was not looking good, people on Wall Street were not affected by the depressing news. The optimism spread from Wall Street to small investors and they were investing with the money they don’t have, which is investing on margin as high as 90%. When the speculative bubble burst, people lost everything including houses and pensions. The main reason ...
By 1929, the U.S. economy was in serious trouble despite the soaring profits in the stock market. Since the end of WWI in 1918, farm prices had dropped about 40% below their pre-war level. Farm profits fell so low that many farmers could not pay their debts to the banks; in turn this caused about 550 banks to go out of business. The nations illusion of unending prosperity was shattered on Oct. 24 1929. Worried investors who had bought stock on credit began to sell it. A panic developed, and on October 29, stockholders sold a record 16,410,030 share. By mid-November, stock prices had plunged about 40%. The stock market crash led to the Great Depression, the worst depression in the nation’s history (until…2014 ☺). It was a terrible price to pay for the false sense of prosperity and national well being of the Roaring Twenties.
In economics, a recession occurs when there is a slowdown in the spending of goods and services in the market. A recession causes a drop in employment, GDP growth, investment, as well as societal well-being. All recessions are caused by a specific cause, but the Great Recession of 2007-2009 was caused by a crash in the housing market. This crash was triggered by a steep decline in housing prices. All of a sudden, people bought houses because there was an excessive amount of money in the economy and they thought the price of houses would only increase. (Amadeo, 2012). There was a financial frenzy as the growing desire for homes expanded. People held a lot of faith in the economy and began spending irrationally on houses that they couldn’t afford. This led to overvalued estate and unsustainable mortgage debt. (McConnell, Brue, Flynn, 2012).
...timately contributed to enormous price depreciation in the hardest hit areas when the housing bubble burst.