"The most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression"

[unforth]

Lehman Bros File for Bankruptcy, and Merrill Lynch Purchased Bargain-Basement by Bank of America

I'm scared.


I know I've found it helpful recently when friends exploring complicated issues have shared that exploration in their LJs (guiniveve's recent exploration of the presidential candidates education background, skygawker's long discussions of the election, and others).

Subprime lending is one of the main causes of the current problems facing investment banks. See also the subprime mortgage crisis. Maybe there was a reason that those with poor credit shouldn't have access to major loans, even if it is rather unfair and biased. I've seen (and been personally hit by) the results of this kind of lending first hand, and it truly sucks - when someone is broke and can't afford to pay their credit card, the last thing they need is late fees and over limit fees that make it impossible to get ahead. It would have done me a favor if the bank had just said "NO, you can't have the credit."

"About 21 percent of all mort­gage originations from 2004 through 2006 were subprime, up from 9 percent from 1996 through 2004. Subprime mortgages totaled $600 billion in 2006, accounting for about one-fifth of the U.S. home loan market." Furthermore, they represent a much higher percentage of the foreclosures. As a result, since 2006, around 100 subprime mortgage lenders to fail or file for bankruptcy.

So why is this destroying the international economy? I'm still trying to figure that part out. The one-sentence implication is that "tranches of sub-prime debts were repackaged by banks and trading houses into attractive-looking investment vehicles and securities that were snapped up by banks, traders and hedge funds on the US, European and Asian markets." A "tranche" is "a term often used to describe a specific class of bonds within an offering wherein each tranche offers varying degrees of risk to the investor. For example, a CMO offering a partitioned MBS portfolio might have mortgages (tranches) that have one-year, two- year, five-year and 20-year maturities. It can also refer to segments that are offered domestically and internationally."

So, if I'm understanding this right, which I might not be, banks and trading houses have the ability to offer bonds on the open market, bonds backed by their sub-prime lending debt, and that these bonds were at one point quite valuable, and were bought by others in large numbers with the expectation that they would accrue in value - which they would do as long as the borrower continued to pay their loan - and presumably the bond would mature at some point and be totally awesome - but ONLY if the borrower pays. Thus, when the lendee defaulted on their loans, the bonds became suddenly worthless. Of course, the bond owner had already paid for those bonds, and while I'm not clear on what happened to that money, I suspect it was reinvested in the lender's company - companies which are now failing en masse - and as a result all of the money went "poof!". The borrowers lost their homes, or filed for bankruptcy to absolve credit card debt, or had their cars reclaimed. The lending agencies folded because they weren't getting paid back, and the housing market was (is) so poor that people aren't buying foreclosed houses - and even if they were, foreclosed houses don't sell for all that much. The bond owners now possess valueless pieces of paper - bonds that were probably the basis for other loans and investments which are now also crashing as a result. Is that about right, ultimabaka? You're probably the only person I know who knows enough about this stuff to tell me if I've got it all wrong. :)

While my initial instincts suggest that this is in part a direct side effect of the economic boom of the 90's, that doesn't seem to be the whole story. The initial cause of the surge in subprime lending was the relaxing of certain usury laws in the early 90's (1993, apparently). I can't find much information on this, though, which is frustrating - the most recent change to usury law appears to be in 1980 ( Marquette National Bank of Minneapolis v. First of Omaha Service Corp, 1978; also, Smiley v. Citibank, 1996). These rulings prevented the states from limiting the interest rate and credit card fees on national bank credit cards. From what I can gather, the implications of these rulings were that national banks could issue credit cards much more easily, and as a result, the use of credit cards exploded in the 1980s and 1990s. It also completely undermined the old usury system, which was state-specific - national banks could move to states where the rules were relaxed and then just issue cards nationally with whatever interest rates and penalties that they wanted to. However, it's particularly in the 21st century that subprime lending has grown, and I'm not sure why. It clearly has something to do with the housing bubble, though - where housing prices rose rapidly until they ceased to have much relationship to the actual value of the property, and are unsustainable in relation to the income of the people buying and living in the houses. Whether or not this is related to the dotCom bubble seems to be up in the air. However, the collapse is definitely related, and is likely to get worse. Many subprime mortgages were done on a "low introductory interest rate" system - with 2, 3, or 5 year periods of low payments followed by 28, 27, or 25 years of much higher payments. It's when the introductory rate goes away that people start to default on their loans. Since the housing boom was in 2005 - 2006, we're starting to get the early defaults now. It's likely to get worse before it gets better, if I'm reading all of this correctly.

A lack of confidence in the market is another major side effect of this whole problem with tranches and bonds and such. Because confidence is down, banks aren't offering credit or loans as much, and because of THAT, it's much harder for people to get access to more credit. Of course, in the long run that's probably a good thing, but for now, there's a massive readjustment as people who probably shouldn't have been granted much credit in the first place try to get more credit to bale them out of their financial problems, can't get it, and sink. And while I can easily say it sarcastically with easy aloof attitude when it's about "people," on the level of the person, it's much more serious, upsetting and difficult to deal with.

I'll admit that one of the things that I've been attempting to determine is whether or not this can be laid at the feet of democrats or republicans. So far, it appears to be more attributable to republicans, but like so many things it's not as a straight forward as that - in large part because it appears that the two main changes in usury law that allowed all of this to happen was in fact caused by Supreme Court decisions, which are at least nominally non-partisan.

Though this has seemed to come out of no where in the past 6 months to those of us who, like me, tend to ignore the financial news, there have been signs to those who know what they are looking at for at least a year and a half. At the same time, though, the real estate market has been dumping vast amounts of money into denying the existence of a bubble. And if there's no bubble, prices won't drop, and that people shouldn't worry about the fact that housing prices were rising at a fast rate than income. Of course, prices are dropping, precipitously, which makes it seem likely that they are very, very wrong. Indeed, others are now predicting that houses will depreciate in value by up to 50%.

Difficult times lay ahead. From an overarching view, it's probably for the best. From a more personal view, though, I think there are going to be a lot of personal tragedies ahead, and I fear that there is little that can be done about it. Still, I'm glad that I did this research. Now I know more.

Comments

[skygawker.livejournal.com]

Thanks for writing this up! I found it really helpful, and in fact I'm going to come back and reread it tomorrow (when it's not midnight, hah) and look at those Google docs too.

And I'm so happy to hear that you've found my ramblings at all worthwhile, too! Thank you! :)

[unforth.livejournal.com]

The stuff you've been writing about the election has been great - it's where I'm getting a surprisingly large amount of my information. :)

[skygawker.livejournal.com]

Wow! Thank you! I take that as a huge honor. :)