title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: Economist Joseph Stiglitz wrote in October 2011 that the recession and high unemployment of the 2009–2011 period was years in the making and driven by: unsustainable consumption; high manufacturing productivity outpacing demand thereby increasing unemployment; income inequality that shifted income from those who tended to spend it (i.e., the middle class) to those who do not (i.e., the wealthy); and emerging market's buildup of reserves (to the tune of $7.6 trillion by 2011) which was not spent. These factors all led to a "massive" shortfall in aggregate demand, which was "papered over" by demand related to the housing bubble until it burst.


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: Financial market stresses became apparent during 2007 that resulted in sizable losses across the financial system, the bankruptcy of over 100 mortgage lenders and the emergency sale of investment bank Bear Stearns in March 2008 to depository bank JP Morgan Chase. Some writers began calling the events in the financial markets during this period the "Subprime Mortgage Crisis" or the "Mortgage crisis".


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: As U.S. housing prices began to fall from their 2006 peak, global investors became less willing to invest in mortgage-backed securities (MBS). The crisis began to affect the financial sector in February 2007, when HSBC, one of the world's largest banks, said its charge for bad debts would be $10.5 billion, 20% higher than expectations. The increase was driven by increased expected losses in its US mortgage portfolio; this was the first major subprime related loss to be reported. By April 2007, over 50 mortgage companies had declared bankruptcy, many of which had specialized in subprime mortgages, the largest of which was New Century Financial. At least 100 mortgage companies either shut down, suspended operations or were sold during 2007. These mortgage companies made money on the origination and sale of mortgages, rather than interest from holding the mortgage. They had relied on continuing access to this global pool of investor capital to continue their operations; when investor capital dried-up, they were forced into bankruptcy.


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: Other parts of the shadow banking system also encountered difficulty. Legal entities known as structured investment vehicles (SIV) and hedge funds had borrowed from investors and bought MBS's. When mortgage defaults rose along with the fall in housing prices, the value of the MBS declined. Investors demanded that these entities put up additional collateral or be forced to pay back the investors immediately, a form of margin call. This resulted in further sales of MBS, which lowered MBS prices further. This dynamic of margin call and price reductions contributed to the collapse of two Bear Stearns hedge funds in July 2007, an event which economist Mark Zandi referred to as "arguably the proximate catalyst" of the crisis in financial markets. On August 9, 2007, French bank BNP Paribas announced that it was halting redemptions on three investment funds due to subprime problems, another "beginning point" of the crisis to some observers.


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: Investment banks such as Bear Stearns had legal obligations to provide financial support to these entities, which created a cash drain. Bear Stearns reported the first quarterly loss in its history during November 2007 and obtained additional financing from a Chinese sovereign wealth fund. Investment banks Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley had also obtained additional capital from sovereign wealth funds in Asia and the Middle East during late 2007.


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: The major investment banks had also increased their own borrowing and investing as the bubble expanded, taking on additional risk in the search for profit. For example, as of November 30, 2006, Bear Stearns reported $383.6 billion in liabilities and $11.8 billion in equity, a leverage ratio of approximately 33. This high leverage ratio meant that only a 3% reduction in the value of its assets would render it insolvent. Unable to withstand the combination of high leverage, reduced access to capital, loss in the value of its MBS securities portfolio, and claims from its hedge funds, Bear Stearns collapsed during March 2008. Historian Robin Blackburn wrote: "The Wall Street investment banks and brokerages hemorrhaged $175 billion of capital in the period July 2007 to March 2008, and Bear Stearns, the fifth largest, was 'rescued' in March, at a fire-sale price, by JP Morgan Chase with the help of $29 billion of guarantees from the Federal Reserve."


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: Financial market conditions continued to worsen during 2008. By August 2008, financial firms around the globe had written down their holdings of subprime related securities by US$501 billion. The IMF estimated that financial institutions around the globe would eventually have to write off $1.5 trillion of their holdings of subprime MBSs. About $750 billion in such losses had been recognized as of November 2008. These losses wiped out much of the capital of the world banking system. Banks headquartered in nations that have signed the Basel Accords must have so many cents of capital for every dollar of credit extended to consumers and businesses. Thus the massive reduction in bank capital just described has reduced the credit available to businesses and households.


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: The crisis hit a critical point in September 2008 with the failure, buyout or bailout of the largest entities in the U.S. shadow banking system. Investment bank Lehman Brothers failed, while Merrill Lynch was purchased by Bank of America. Investment banks Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley obtained depository bank holding charters, which gave them access to emergency lines of credit from the Federal Reserve. Government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taken over by the federal government. Insurance giant AIG, which had sold insurance-like protection for mortgage-backed securities, did not have the capital to honor its commitments; U.S. taxpayers covered its obligations instead in a bailout that exceeded $100 billion.


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: Further, there was the equivalent of a bank run on other parts of the shadow system, which severely disrupted the ability of non-financial institutions to obtain the funds to run their daily operations. During a one-week period in September 2008, $170 billion were withdrawn from US money funds, causing the Federal Reserve to announce that it would guarantee these funds up to a point. The money market had been a key source of credit for banks (CDs) and nonfinancial firms (commercial paper). The TED spread (see graph above), a measure of the risk of interbank lending, quadrupled shortly after the Lehman failure. This credit freeze brought the global financial system to the brink of collapse.


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: In a dramatic meeting on September 18, 2008, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke met with key legislators to propose a $700 billion emergency bailout of the banking system. Bernanke reportedly told them: "If we don't do this, we may not have an economy on Monday." The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act, also called the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), was signed into law on October 3, 2008.


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: In a nine-day period from October 1–9, the S&P 500 fell a staggering 251 points, losing 21.6% of its value. The week of October 6–10 saw the largest percentage drop in the history of the Dow Jones Industrial Average – even worse than any single week in the Great Depression.


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: The response of the US Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, and other central banks was dramatic. During the last quarter of 2008, these central banks purchased US$2.5 trillion of government debt and troubled private assets from banks. This was the largest liquidity injection into the credit market, and the largest monetary policy action, in world history. The governments of European nations and the US also raised the capital of their national banking systems by $1.5 trillion, by purchasing newly issued preferred stock in their major banks. On December 16, 2008, the Federal Reserve cut the Federal funds rate to 0–0.25%, where it remained until December 2015; this period of zero interest-rate policy was unprecedented in U.S. history.


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: The International Monetary Fund estimated that large U.S. and European banks lost more than $1 trillion on toxic assets and from bad loans from January 2007 to September 2009. These losses were expected to top $2.8 trillion from 2007 to 2010. U.S. banks losses were forecast to hit $1 trillion and European bank losses will reach $1.6 trillion. The IMF estimated that U.S. banks were about 60 through their losses, but British and eurozone banks only 40%.


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: Between June 2007 and November 2008, Americans lost more than a quarter of their net worth. By early November 2008, a broad U.S. stock index, the S&P 500, was down 45% from its 2007 high. Housing prices had dropped 20% from their 2006 peak, with futures markets signaling a 30–35% potential drop. Total home equity in the United States, which was valued at $13 trillion at its peak in 2006, had dropped to $8.8 trillion by mid-2008 and was still falling in late 2008. Total retirement assets, Americans' second-largest household asset, dropped by 22%, from $10.3 trillion in 2006 to $8 trillion in mid-2008. During the same period, savings and investment assets (apart from retirement savings) lost $1.2 trillion and pension assets lost $1.3 trillion. Taken together, these losses total $8.3 trillion.


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: Members of US minority groups received a disproportionate number of subprime mortgages, and so have experienced a disproportionate level of the resulting foreclosures. A study commissioned by the ACLU on the long-term consequences of these discriminatory lending practices found that the housing crisis will likely widen the black-white wealth gap for the next generation. Recent research shows that complex mortgages were chosen by prime borrowers with high income levels seeking to purchase expensive houses relative to their incomes. Borrowers with complex mortgages experienced substantially higher default rates than borrowers with traditional mortgages with similar characteristics. The crisis had a devastating effect on the U.S. auto industry. New vehicle sales, which peaked at 17 million in 2005, recovered to only 12 million by 2010.


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: The crisis in Europe generally progressed from banking system crises to sovereign debt crises, as many countries elected to bail out their banking systems using taxpayer money. Greece was different in that it concealed large public debts in addition to issues within its banking system. Several countries received bailout packages from the "troika" (European Commission, European Central Bank, International Monetary Fund), which also implemented a series of emergency measures.


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: Many European countries embarked on austerity programs, reducing their budget deficits relative to GDP from 2010 to 2011. For example, according to the "CIA World Factbook" Greece improved its budget deficit from 10.4% GDP in 2010 to 9.6% in 2011. Iceland, Italy, Ireland, Portugal, France, and Spain also improved their budget deficits from 2010 to 2011 relative to GDP.


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: However, with the exception of Germany, each of these countries had public-debt-to-GDP ratios that increased (i.e., worsened) from 2010 to 2011, as indicated in the chart shown here. Greece's public-debt-to-GDP ratio increased from 143% in 2010 to 165% in 2011. This indicates that despite improving budget deficits, GDP growth was not sufficient to support a decline (improvement) in the debt-to-GDP ratio for these countries during this period. Eurostat reported that the debt to GDP ratio for the 17 Euro area countries together was 70.1% in 2008, 79.9% in 2009, 85.3% in 2010, and 87.2% in 2011.


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: Unemployment is another variable that might be considered in evaluating austerity measures. According to the "CIA World Factbook", from 2010 to 2011, the unemployment rates in Spain, Greece, Ireland, Portugal, and the UK increased. France and Italy had no significant changes, while in Germany and Iceland the unemployment rate declined. Eurostat reported that Eurozone unemployment reached record levels in September 2012 at 11.6%, up from 10.3% the prior year. Unemployment varied significantly by country.


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: Economist Martin Wolf analyzed the relationship between cumulative GDP growth from 2008 to 2012 and total reduction in budget deficits due to austerity policies (see chart) in several European countries during April 2012. He concluded that: "In all, there is no evidence here that large fiscal contractions [budget deficit reductions] bring benefits to confidence and growth that offset the direct effects of the contractions. They bring exactly what one would expect: small contractions bring recessions and big contractions bring depressions." Changes in budget balances (deficits or surpluses) explained approximately 53% of the change in GDP, according to the equation derived from the IMF data used in his analysis.


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: Economist Paul Krugman analyzed the relationship between GDP and reduction in budget deficits for several European countries in April 2012 and concluded that austerity was slowing growth, similar to Martin Wolf. He also wrote: "this also implies that 1 euro of austerity yields only about 0.4 euros of reduced deficit, even in the short run. No wonder, then, that the whole austerity enterprise is spiraling into disaster."


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: The crisis had a significant and long-lasting impact on U.S. employment. During the Great Recession, 8.5 million jobs were lost from the peak employment in early 2008 of approximately 138 million to the trough in February 2010 of 129 million, roughly 6% of the workforce. From February 2010 to September 2012, approximately 4.3 million jobs were added, offsetting roughly half the losses.


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: In Spring 2011 there were about a million homes in foreclosure in the United States, several million more in the pipeline, and 872,000 previously foreclosed homes in the hands of banks. Sales were slow; economists estimated that it would take three years to clear the backlogged inventory. According to Mark Zandi of Moody's Analytics, home prices were falling and could be expected to fall further during 2011. However, the rate of new borrowers falling behind in mortgage payments had begun to decrease.


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: The "New York Times" reported in January 2015 that: "About 17% of all homeowners are still 'upside down' on their mortgages ... That's down from 21% in the third quarter of 2013, and the 2012 peak of 31%." Foreclosures as of October 2014 were down 26% from the prior year, at 41,000 completed foreclosures. That was 65% below the peak in September 2010 (roughly 117,000), but still above the pre-crisis (2000–2006) average of 21,000 per month.


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: Research indicates recovery from financial crises can be protracted, with lengthy periods of high unemployment and substandard economic growth. Economist Carmen Reinhart stated in August 2011: "Debt de-leveraging [reduction] takes about seven years ... And in the decade following severe financial crises, you tend to grow by 1 to 1.5 percentage points less than in the decade before, because the decade before was fueled by a boom in private borrowing, and not all of that growth was real. The unemployment figures in advanced economies after falls are also very dark. Unemployment remains anchored about five percentage points above what it was in the decade before."


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: During the crisis and ensuing recession, U.S. consumers increased their savings as they paid down debt ("deleveraged") but corporations simultaneously were reducing their investment. In a healthy economy, private sector savings placed into the banking system is borrowed and invested by companies. This investment is one of the major components of GDP. A private sector financial deficit from 2004 to 2008 transitioned to a large surplus of savings over investment that exceeded $1 trillion by early 2009 and remained above $800 billion as of September 2012. Part of this investment reduction related to the housing market, a major component of investment in the GDP computation. This surplus explains how even significant government deficit spending would not increase interest rates and how Federal Reserve action to increase the money supply does not result in inflation, because the economy is awash with savings with no place to go.


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: Economist Richard Koo described similar effects for several of the developed world economies in December 2011:Today private sectors in the U.S., the U.K., Spain, and Ireland (but not Greece) are undergoing massive deleveraging in spite of record low interest rates. This means these countries are all in serious balance sheet recessions. The private sectors in Japan and Germany are not borrowing, either. With borrowers disappearing and banks reluctant to lend, it is no wonder that, after nearly three years of record low interest rates and massive liquidity injections, industrial economies are still doing so poorly. Flow of funds data for the U.S. show a massive shift away from borrowing to savings by the private sector since the housing bubble burst in 2007. The shift for the private sector as a whole represents over 9 percent of U.S. GDP at a time of zero interest rates. Moreover, this increase in private sector savings exceeds the increase in government borrowings (5.8 percent of GDP), which suggests that the government is not doing enough to offset private sector deleveraging.


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: Economist Wynne Godley explained in 2004–2005 how U.S. sector imbalances posed a significant risk to the U.S. and global economy. The combination of a high and growing foreign sector surplus and high government sector deficit meant that the private sector was moving towards a net borrowing position (from surplus to deficit) as a housing bubble developed, which he warned was an unsustainable combination.


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: Economist Martin Wolf explained in July 2012 that government fiscal balance is one of three major financial sectoral balances in the U.S. economy, the others being the foreign financial sector and the private financial sector. The sum of the surpluses or deficits across these three sectors must be zero by definition. In the U.S., a foreign financial surplus (or capital surplus) exists because capital is imported (net) to fund the trade deficit. Further, there is a private sector financial surplus due to household savings exceeding business investment. By definition, there must therefore exist a government budget deficit so all three net to zero. The government sector includes federal, state and local. For example, the government budget deficit in 2011 was approximately 10% GDP (8.6% GDP of which was federal), offsetting a capital surplus of 4% GDP and a private sector surplus of 6% GDP.


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: Wolf argued that the sudden shift in the private sector from deficit to surplus forced the government balance into deficit, writing: "The financial balance of the private sector shifted towards surplus by the almost unbelievable cumulative total of 11.2 per cent of gross domestic product between the third quarter of 2007 and the second quarter of 2009, which was when the financial deficit of US government (federal and state) reached its peak...No fiscal policy changes explain the collapse into massive fiscal deficit between 2007 and 2009, because there was none of any importance. The collapse is explained by the massive shift of the private sector from financial deficit into surplus or, in other words, from boom to bust."


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: Various actions have been taken since the crisis became apparent in August 2007. In September 2008, major instability in world financial markets increased awareness and attention to the crisis. Various agencies and regulators, as well as political officials, began to take additional, more comprehensive steps to handle the crisis.


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: To date, various government agencies have committed or spent trillions of dollars in loans, asset purchases, guarantees, and direct spending. For a summary of U.S. government financial commitments and investments related to the crisis, see CNN – Bailout Scorecard.


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: The central bank of the US, the Federal Reserve, in partnership with central banks around the world, took several steps to address the crisis. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke stated in early 2008: "Broadly, the Federal Reserve's response followed two tracks: efforts to support market liquidity and functioning and the pursuit of our macroeconomic objectives through monetary policy."


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: According to Ben Bernanke, expansion of the Fed balance sheet means the Fed is electronically creating money, necessary "because our economy is very weak and inflation is very low. When the economy begins to recover, that will be the time that we need to unwind those programs, raise interest rates, reduce the money supply, and make sure that we have a recovery that does not involve inflation."


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: "The New York Times" reported in February 2013 that the Fed continued to support the economy with various monetary stimulus measures: "The Fed, which has amassed almost $3 trillion in Treasury and mortgage-backed securities to promote more borrowing and lending, is expanding those holdings by $85 billion a month until it sees clear improvement in the labor market. It plans to hold short-term interest rates near zero even longer, at least until the unemployment rate falls below 6.5 percent."


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: On February 13, 2008, President George W. Bush signed into law a $168 billion economic stimulus package, mainly taking the form of income tax rebate checks mailed directly to taxpayers. Checks were mailed starting the week of April 28, 2008. However, this rebate coincided with an unexpected jump in gasoline and food prices. This coincidence led some to wonder whether the stimulus package would have the intended effect, or whether consumers would simply spend their rebates to cover higher food and fuel prices.


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: On February 17, 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, an $787 billion stimulus package with a broad spectrum of spending and tax cuts. Over $75 billion of the package was specifically allocated to programs which help struggling homeowners. This program is referred to as the Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan.


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: The U.S. government continued to run large deficits post-crisis, with the national debt rising from $10.0 trillion as of September 2008 to $16.1 trillion by September 2012. The debt increases were $1.89 trillion in fiscal year 2009, $1.65 trillion in 2010, $1.23 trillion in 2011, and $1.26 trillion in 2012.


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: Losses on mortgage-backed securities and other assets purchased with borrowed money have dramatically reduced the capital base of financial institutions, rendering many either insolvent or less capable of lending. Governments have provided funds to banks. Some banks have taken significant steps to acquire additional capital from private sources.


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: The U.S. government passed the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (EESA or TARP) during October 2008. This law included $700 billion in funding for the "Troubled Assets Relief Program" (TARP). Following a model initiated by the United Kingdom bank rescue package, $205 billion was used in the Capital Purchase Program to lend funds to banks in exchange for dividend-paying preferred stock.


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: Another method of recapitalizing banks is for government and private investors to provide cash in exchange for mortgage-related assets (i.e., "toxic" or "legacy" assets), improving the quality of bank capital while reducing uncertainty regarding the financial position of banks. U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner announced a plan during March 2009 to purchase "legacy" or "toxic" assets from banks. The Public-Private Partnership Investment Program involves government loans and guarantees to encourage private investors to provide funds to purchase toxic assets from banks.


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: As of April 2012, the government had recovered $300 billion of the $414 billion that was ultimately distributed to them via TARP. Some elements of TARP such as foreclosure prevention aid will not be paid back. Estimated taxpayer losses were $60 billion.


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: For a summary of U.S. government financial commitments and investments related to the crisis, see CNN – Bailout Scorecard.


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: Several major financial institutions either failed, were bailed out by governments, or merged (voluntarily or otherwise) during the crisis. While the specific circumstances varied, in general the decline in the value of mortgage-backed securities held by these companies resulted in either their insolvency, the equivalent of bank runs as investors pulled funds from them, or inability to secure new funding in the credit markets. These firms had typically borrowed and invested large sums of money relative to their cash or equity capital, meaning they were highly leveraged and vulnerable to unanticipated credit market disruptions.


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: The five largest U.S. investment banks, with combined liabilities or debts of $4 trillion, either went bankrupt (Lehman Brothers), were taken over by other companies (Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch), or were bailed out by the U.S. government (Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley) during 2008. Government-sponsored enterprises (GSE) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac either directly owed or guaranteed nearly $5 trillion in mortgage obligations, with a similarly weak capital base, when they were placed into receivership in September 2008. For scale, this $9 trillion in obligations concentrated in seven highly leveraged institutions can be compared to the $14 trillion size of the U.S. economy (GDP) or to the total national debt of $10 trillion in September 2008.


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: Major depository banks around the world had also used financial innovations such as structured investment vehicles to circumvent capital ratio regulations. Notable global failures included Northern Rock, which was nationalized at an estimated cost of £87 billion ($150 billion). In the U.S., Washington Mutual (WaMu) was seized in September 2008 by the US Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS). This would be followed by the "shotgun wedding" of Wells Fargo and Wachovia after it was speculated that without the merger Wachovia was also going to fail. Dozens of U.S. banks received funds as part of the TARP or $700 billion bailout. The TARP funds gained some controversy after PNC Financial Services received TARP money, only to turn around hours later and purchase the struggling National City Corp., which itself had become a victim of the subprime crisis.


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: As a result of the financial crisis in 2008, twenty-five U.S. banks became insolvent and were taken over by the FDIC. As of August 14, 2009, an additional 77 banks became insolvent. This seven-month tally surpasses the 50 banks that were seized in all of 1993, but is still much smaller than the number of failed banking institutions in 1992, 1991, and 1990. The United States has lost over 6 million jobs since the recession began in December 2007.


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: The FDIC deposit insurance fund, supported by fees on insured banks, fell to $13 billion in the first quarter of 2009. That is the lowest total since September 1993.


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: According to some, the bailouts could be traced directly to Alan Greenspan's efforts to reflate the stock market and the economy after the tech stock bust, and specifically to a February 23, 2004, speech Mr. Greenspan made to the Mortgage Bankers Association where he suggested that the time had come to push average American borrowers into more exotic loans with variable rates, or deferred interest. This argument suggests that Mr. Greenspan sought to enlist banks to expand lending and debt to stimulate asset prices and that the Federal Reserve and US Treasury Department would back any losses that might result. As early as March 2007 some commentators predicted that a bailout of the banks would exceed $1 trillion, at a time when Ben Bernanke, Alan Greenspan and Henry Paulson all claimed that mortgage problems were "contained" to the subprime market and no bailout of the financial sector would be necessary.


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: Both lenders and borrowers may benefit from avoiding foreclosure, which is a costly and lengthy process. Some lenders have offered troubled borrowers more favorable mortgage terms (e.g. refinancing, loan modification or loss mitigation). Borrowers have also been encouraged to contact their lenders to discuss alternatives.


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: "The Economist" described the issue this way in February 2009: "No part of the financial crisis has received so much attention, with so little to show for it, as the tidal wave of home foreclosures sweeping over America. Government programmes have been ineffectual, and private efforts not much better." Up to 9 million homes may enter foreclosure over the 2009–2011 period, versus one million in a typical year. At roughly U.S. $50,000 per foreclosure according to a 2006 study by the Chicago Federal Reserve Bank, 9 million foreclosures represents $450 billion in losses.


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: A variety of voluntary private and government-administered or supported programs were implemented during 2007–2009 to assist homeowners with case-by-case mortgage assistance, to mitigate the foreclosure crisis engulfing the U.S. One example is the Hope Now Alliance, an ongoing collaborative effort between the US Government and private industry to help certain subprime borrowers. In February 2008, the Alliance reported that during the second half of 2007, it had helped 545,000 subprime borrowers with shaky credit, or 7.7% of 7.1 million subprime loans outstanding as of September 2007. A spokesperson for the Alliance acknowledged that much more must be done.


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: During late 2008, major banks and both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac established moratoriums (delays) on foreclosures, to give homeowners time to work towards refinancing.


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: Critics have argued that the case-by-case loan modification method is ineffective, with too few homeowners assisted relative to the number of foreclosures and with nearly 40% of those assisted homeowners again becoming delinquent within 8 months. In December 2008, the U.S. FDIC reported that more than half of mortgages modified during the first half of 2008 were delinquent again, in many cases because payments were not reduced or mortgage debt was not forgiven. This is further evidence that case-by-case loan modification is not effective as a policy tool.


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: In February 2009, economists Nouriel Roubini and Mark Zandi recommended an "across the board" (systemic) reduction of mortgage principal balances by as much as 20–30%. Lowering the mortgage balance would help lower monthly payments and also address an estimated 20 million homeowners that may have a financial incentive to enter voluntary foreclosure because they are "underwater" (i.e. the mortgage balance is larger than the home value).


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: A study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston indicated that banks were reluctant to modify loans. Only 3% of seriously delinquent homeowners had their mortgage payments reduced during 2008. In addition, investors who hold MBS and have a say in mortgage modifications have not been a significant impediment; the study found no difference in the rate of assistance whether the loans were controlled by the bank or by investors. Commenting on the study, economists Dean Baker and Paul Willen both advocated providing funds directly to homeowners instead of banks.


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: The "Los Angeles Times" reported the results of a study that found homeowners with high credit scores at the time of entering the mortgage are 50% more likely to "strategically default" – abruptly and intentionally pull the plug and abandon the mortgage – compared with lower-scoring borrowers. Such strategic defaults were heavily concentrated in markets with the highest price declines. An estimated 588,000 strategic defaults occurred nationwide during 2008, more than double the total in 2007. They represented 18% of all serious delinquencies that extended for more than 60 days in the fourth quarter of 2008.


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: On February 18, 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama announced a $73 billion program to help up to nine million homeowners avoid foreclosure, which was supplemented by $200 billion in additional funding for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to purchase and more easily refinance mortgages. The plan is funded mostly from the EESA's $700 billion financial bailout fund. It uses cost sharing and incentives to encourage lenders to reduce homeowner's monthly payments to 31% of their monthly income. Under the program, a lender would be responsible for reducing monthly payments to no more than 38% of a borrower's income, with government sharing the cost to further cut the rate to 31%. The plan also involves forgiving a portion of the borrower's mortgage balance. Companies that service mortgages will get incentives to modify loans and to help the homeowner stay current.


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: Untold thousands of people have complained in recent years that they were subjected to a nightmare experience of lost paperwork, misapplied fees and Kafkaesque phone calls with clueless customer service representatives as they strived to avoid foreclosures they say were preventable. These claims are backed up by a swelling number of academic studies and insider accounts of misconduct and abuse.


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: Now it's becoming clear just how chaotic the whole system became. Depositions from employees working for the banks or their law firms depict a foreclosure process in which it was standard practice for employees with virtually no training to masquerade as vice presidents, sometimes signing documents on behalf of as many as 15 different banks. Together, the banks and their law firms created a quick-and-dirty foreclosure machine that was designed to rush through foreclosures as fast as possible.


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: President Barack Obama and key advisers introduced a series of regulatory proposals in June 2009. The proposals address consumer protection, executive pay, bank financial cushions or capital requirements, expanded regulation of the shadow banking system and derivatives, and enhanced authority for the Federal Reserve to safely wind-down systemically important institutions, among others. The Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act was signed into law in July 2010 to address some of the causes of the crisis.


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner testified before Congress on October 29, 2009. His testimony included five elements he stated as critical to effective reform:


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: The Dodd-Frank Act addressed these elements, but stopped short of breaking up the largest banks, which grew larger due to mergers of investment banks at the core of the crisis with depository banks (e.g., JP Morgan Chase acquired Bear Stearns and Bank of America acquired Merrill Lynch in 2008). Assets of five largest banks as a share of total commercial banking assets rose then stabilized in the wake of the crisis. During 2013, Senators John McCain (Republican) and Elizabeth Warren (Democratic) proposed a bill to separate investment and depository banking, to insulate depository banks from higher risk activities. These were separated prior to the 1999 repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act.


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: Significant law enforcement action and litigation resulted from the crisis. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation probed the possibility of fraud by mortgage financing companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers, and insurer American International Group, among others. New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo sued Long Island based Amerimod, one of the nation's largest loan modification corporations for fraud, and issued numerous subpoenas to other similar companies. The FBI assigned more agents to mortgage-related crimes and its caseload dramatically increased. The FBI began a probe of Countrywide Financial in March 2008 for possible fraudulent lending practices and securities fraud.


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: Several hundred civil lawsuits were filed in federal courts beginning in 2007 related to the subprime crisis. The number of filings in state courts was not quantified but was also believed to be significant. In August 2014, Bank of America agreed to a near-$17 billion deal to settle claims against it relating to the sale of toxic mortgage-linked securities including subprime home loans, in what was believed to be the largest settlement in U.S. corporate history. The deal with the U.S. Justice Department topped a deal the regulator made the previous year with JPMorgan Chase over similar issues. Morgan Stanley paid $2.6 billion to settle claims in February 2015, without reaching closure on homeowner relief and state claim.


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: U.S. banks have paid considerable fines from legal settlements due to mortgage-related activities. "The Economist" estimated that from 2008 through October 2013, U.S. banks had agreed to $95 billion in mortgage-related penalties. Settlement amounts included Bank of America ($47.2B), JP Morgan Chase ($22.3B), Wells Fargo ($9.8B), Citigroup ($6.2B) and Goldman-Sachs ($0.9B). Bloomberg reported that from the end of 2010 to October 2013, the six largest Wall St. banks had agreed to pay $67 billion. CNBC reported in April 2015 that banking fines and penalties totaled $150 billion between 2007 and 2014, versus $700 billion in profits over that time.


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: Many of these fines were obtained via the efforts of President Obama's Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force (FFETF), which was created in November 2009 to investigate and prosecute financial crimes. The FFETF involves over 20 federal agencies, 94 U.S. Attorney's offices, and state and local partners. One of its eight working groups, the Residential Mortgage Backed Securities (RMBS) Working Group, was created in 2012 and is involved in investigating and negotiating many of the fines and penalties described above.


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: Several books written about the crisis were made into movies. Examples include "The Big Short" by Michael Lewis and "Too Big to Fail" by Andrew Ross Sorkin. The former tells the story from the perspective of several investors who bet against the housing market, while the latter follows key government and banking officials focusing on the critical events of September 2008, when many large financial institutions faced or experienced collapse.


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: Estimates of impact have continued to climb. During April 2008, International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimated that global losses for financial institutions would approach $1 trillion. One year later, the IMF estimated cumulative losses of banks and other financial institutions globally would exceed $4 trillion.


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: Francis Fukuyama has argued that the crisis represents the end of Reaganism in the financial sector, which was characterized by lighter regulation, pared-back government, and lower taxes. Significant financial sector regulatory changes are expected as a result of the crisis.


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: Fareed Zakaria believes that the crisis may force Americans and their government to live within their means. Further, some of the best minds may be redeployed from financial engineering to more valuable business activities, or to science and technology.


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: Roger Altman wrote that "the crash of 2008 has inflicted profound damage on [the U.S.] financial system, its economy, and its standing in the world; the crisis is an important geopolitical setback...the crisis has coincided with historical forces that were already shifting the world's focus away from the United States. Over the medium term, the United States will have to operate from a smaller global platform – while others, especially China, will have a chance to rise faster."


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt has argued that U.S. trade deficits and budget deficits are unsustainable. America must regain its competitiveness through innovative products, training of production workers, and business leadership. He advocates specific national goals related to energy security or independence, specific technologies, expansion of the manufacturing job base, and net exporter status. "The world has been reset. Now we must lead an aggressive American renewal to win in the future." Of critical importance, he said, is the need to focus on technology and manufacturing. "Many bought into the idea that America could go from a technology-based, export-oriented powerhouse to a services-led, consumption-based economy—and somehow still expect to prosper," Immelt said. "That idea was flat wrong."


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: Economist Paul Krugman wrote in 2009: "The prosperity of a few years ago, such as it was—profits were terrific, wages not so much – depended on a huge bubble in housing, which replaced an earlier huge bubble in stocks. And since the housing bubble isn't coming back, the spending that sustained the economy in the pre-crisis years isn't coming back either." Niall Ferguson stated that excluding the effect of home equity extraction, the U.S. economy grew at a 1% rate during the Bush years. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has argued that this is an economic reset at a lower level, rather than a recession, meaning that no quick recovery to pre-recession levels can be expected.


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: The U.S. Federal government's efforts to support the global financial system have resulted in significant new financial commitments, totaling $7 trillion by November 2008. These commitments can be characterized as investments, loans, and loan guarantees, rather than direct expenditures. In many cases, the government purchased financial assets such as commercial paper, mortgage-backed securities, or other types of asset-backed paper, to enhance liquidity in frozen markets. As the crisis has progressed, the Fed has expanded the collateral against which it is willing to lend to include higher-risk assets.


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: The Economist wrote in May 2009: "Having spent a fortune bailing out their banks, Western governments will have to pay a price in terms of higher taxes to meet the interest on that debt. In the case of countries (like Britain and America) that have trade as well as budget deficits, those higher taxes will be needed to meet the claims of foreign creditors. Given the political implications of such austerity, the temptation will be to default by stealth, by letting their currencies depreciate. Investors are increasingly alive to this danger..."


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: The crisis has cast doubt on the legacy of Alan Greenspan, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve System from 1986 to January 2006. Senator Chris Dodd claimed that Greenspan created the "perfect storm". When asked to comment on the crisis, Greenspan spoke as follows:


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: Following the recession of the 2008–2010 era, there became a bigger focus from millennials on how mortgages affect their personal finances. Most who were of working age were unable to find employment that would allow them to save enough for a house. The lack of good employment opportunities has created questions among this generation about how much of their lives that they are willing to invest into a home and if that money is not better spent elsewhere. Mortgage Magnitude looks at how many years of life a mortgage will actually cost a consumer given the area's median income and median home value, showing homes in metropolitan areas ranging from ratios of 1:5 to 1:10. Donna Fancher researched to find if the "American Dream" of owning a home is still a realistic goal, or if it is continually shrinking for the youth of the US, writing:


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: "The value of owner-occupied housing also exceeds income growth. In many markets, prospective buyers are continuing to rent due to concerns over affordability. However, demand also increases rent disproportionately."


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: While housing prices fell dramatically during the recession, prices have been steadily coming back to pre-recession prices; with a rising interest rate, home ownership could continue to be challenging for millennials. Jason Furman wrote:


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: The recession officially ended in the second quarter of 2009, but the nation's economy continued to be described as in an "economic malaise" during the second quarter of 2011. Some economists described the post-recession years as the weakest recovery since the Great Depression and World War II. The weak economic recovery has led many to call it a "Zombie Economy", so-called because it is neither dead nor alive. Household incomes, as of August 2012, had fallen more since the end of the recession, than during the 18-month recession, falling an additional 4.8% since the end of the recession, totally to 7.2% since the December 2007 level. Additionally as of September 2012, the long-term unemployment was the highest it had been since World War II, and the unemployment rate peaked several months after the end of the recession (10.1% in October 2009) and was above 8% until September 2012 (7.8%). The Federal Reserve kept interest rates at a historically low 0.25% from December 2008 until December 2015, when it began to raise them again.


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: However, the Great Recession was different in kind from all the recessions since the Great Depression, as it also involved a banking crisis and the de-leveraging (debt reduction) of highly indebted households. Research indicates recovery from financial crises can be protracted, with lengthy periods of high unemployment and substandard economic growth. Economist Carmen Reinhart stated in August 2011: "Debt de-leveraging [reduction] takes about seven years ... And in the decade following severe financial crises, you tend to grow by 1 to 1.5 percentage points less than in the decade before, because the decade before was fueled by a boom in private borrowing, and not all of that growth was real. The unemployment figures in advanced economies after falls are also very dark. Unemployment remains anchored about five percentage points above what it was in the decade before."


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: Then-Fed Chair Ben Bernanke explained during November 2012 several of the economic headwinds that slowed the recovery:


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: For example, U.S. federal spending rose from 19.1% GDP in fiscal year (FY) 2007 to 24.4% GDP in FY2009 (the last year budgeted by President Bush) before falling towards to 20.4% GDP in 2014, closer to the historical average. In dollar terms, federal spending was actually higher in 2009 than in 2014, despite a historical trend of a roughly 5% annual increase. This reduced real GDP growth by approximately 0.5% per quarter on average between Q3 2010 and Q2 2014. Both households and government practicing austerity at the same time was a recipe for a slow recovery.


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: Several key economic variables (e.g., Job level, real GDP per capita, household net worth, and the federal budget deficit) hit their low point (trough) in 2009 or 2010, after which they began to turn upward, recovering to pre-recession (2007) levels between late 2012 and May 2014 (close to Reinhart's prediction), which marked the recovery of all jobs lost during the recession. Real median household income fell to a trough of $53,331 in 2012, but recovered to an all-time high of $59,039 by 2016. However, the gains during the recovery were very unevenly distributed. Economist Emmanuel Saez wrote in June 2016 that the top 1% of families captured 52% of the total real income (GDP) growth per family from 2009–2015. The gains were more evenly distributed after the tax increases in 2013 on higher-income earners.


title: Subprime mortgage crisis

text: President Obama declared the bailout measures started under the Bush Administration and continued during his Administration as completed and mostly profitable as of December 2014. As of January 2018, bailout funds had been fully recovered by the government, when interest on loans is taken into consideration. A total of $626B was invested, loaned, or granted due to various bailout measures, while $390B had been returned to the Treasury. The Treasury had earned another $323B in interest on bailout loans, resulting in an $87B profit.


title: Daniel Henney

text: Daniel Phillip Henney (born November 28, 1979) is an American actor and model. He first came into international prominence with his television debut as Dr. Henry Kim on the Korean drama "My Lovely Sam Soon" (2005).


title: Daniel Henney

text: He has gone on to star in films such as "Seducing Mr. Perfect" (2006), "My Father" (2007), "" (2009), "Shanghai Calling" (2012), "The Last Stand" (2013), "One Night Surprise" (2013), and "Big Hero 6" (2014). In television, he has starred in the Korean "Spring Waltz" and as well as US television series "Hawaii Five-0" and "". He joined the regular cast of "Criminal Minds" for its 13th, 14th and 15th seasons. He currently stars as Lan Mandragoran in the 2021 adaptation of "The Wheel of Time".


title: Daniel Henney

text: Henney was born on November 28, 1979 in Carson City, Michigan. His mother Christine Henney, an American adoptee from Busan, South Korea, was a nurse. His father Philip Henney, an American of British and Irish descent, worked in a factory. He was a star basketball player at Carson City-Crystal High School and led the Eagles to the MHSAA Central region (CSAA) 2nd-place finish during his senior year in 1998.


title: Daniel Henney

text: Henney attended various colleges—including Albion College, Alma College and Elgin Community College—but never completed his college studies due to his burgeoning modeling career. He was credited on many online portals for a time to have had graduated with an economics degree from the University of Illinois at Chicago. However that was proven to be false when an academic scandal in 2007 revealed that several South Korean social figures and celebrities, such as Choi Soo-jong and Jang Mi-hee, had falsified their academic records.


title: Daniel Henney

text: Henney moved to South Korea after having lived on and off in Hong Kong and Taiwan for four years. While in New York in 2004, he did some work Off-Broadway while auditioning for television shows.


title: Daniel Henney

text: Henney started modeling in the U.S. in 2001 and worked in France, Hong Kong, and many more while attending college. After his debut in South Korea with an advertisement for the Amore Pacific's cosmetic "Odyssey Sunrise", he became a spokesperson for commercials with Jun Ji-hyun for Olympus cameras and Kim Tae-hee for Daewoo Electronics's Klasse air conditioners. Henney is signed with DNA Models in New York under the celebrity division.While modeling in South Korea for Olympus in 2005, he was scouted by a talent manager who got Henney a role in the Korean drama "My Lovely Sam Soon", aka "My Name is Kim Sam Soon". Henney, who did not speak any Korean, was cast as an Asian American physician Henry Kim who struggled with the language. He played a supporting role in a love triangle between female lead Hee-jin (Jung Ryeo-won) and restaurateur Hyun Jin-heon (Hyun Bin). The show was widely popular, with over half of South Korean households estimated to have watched the finale.


title: Daniel Henney

text: Henney then starred in another romantic drama "Spring Waltz" as Philip, a foreign music manager, in 2006. He resumed his modeling career when he was featured in a Bean Pole campaign with Gwyneth Paltrow.


title: Daniel Henney

text: Henney made his feature film debut in another romantic comedy "Seducing Mr. Perfect" (2006), which coincided with pop star Rain's debut in "I'm a Cyborg, But That's OK" (2006). His second film, "My Father", won multiple awards in South Korea and Henney became the first foreigner to sweep all the major cinema awards in the Best New Actor category.


title: Daniel Henney

text: In 2010, Henney returned to South Korea television for KBS2's "", alongside Rain and actress Lee Na-young.


title: Daniel Henney

text: Henney starred as Special Agent Matt Simmons in the American television series "", a spin-off of "Criminal Minds," for two seasons from 2016 to 2017. After the "Beyond Borders"'s cancellation, it was announced in June 2017 that Henney's Matt Simmons would continue on "Criminal Minds" as a series regular for season 13. He remained a part of the cast until the series concluded in season 15.


title: Daniel Henney

text: In September 2019, Henney was cast in the supporting role of Lan Mandragoran in Amazon Video's adaptation of Robert Jordan's fantasy epic "The Wheel of Time".


title: Chase Bank

text: JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., doing business as Chase Bank or often as Chase, is an American national bank headquartered in New York City, that constitutes the consumer and commercial banking subsidiary of the U.S. multinational banking and financial services holding company, JPMorgan Chase. The bank was known as Chase Manhattan Bank until it merged with J.P. Morgan & Co. in 2000. Chase Manhattan Bank was formed by the merger of the Chase National Bank and the Manhattan Company in 1955. The bank merged with Bank One Corporation in 2004 and in 2008 acquired the deposits and most assets of Washington Mutual.


title: Chase Bank

text: Chase offers more than 5,100 branches and 17,000 ATMs nationwide. JPMorgan Chase & Co. has 250,355 employees (as of 2016) and operates in more than 100 countries. JPMorgan Chase & Co. had assets of $3.31 trillion in 2022, which makes it the largest bank in the United States as well as the bank with the most branches in the United States and the only bank with a presence in all of the contiguous United States. JPMorgan Chase, through its Chase subsidiary, is one of the Big Four banks of the United States.


title: Chase Bank

text: The Bank of The Manhattan Company (New York) was founded on September 1, 1799 and continued under that name until 1955, when it merged with the Chase National Bank, which was founded in 1877; the merged bank was called The Chase Manhattan Bank.


title: Chase Bank

text: Chase traces its history back to the founding of The Manhattan Company by Aaron Burr on September 1, 1799 in a house at 40 Wall Street:


title: Chase Bank

text: In 2006, the modern-day Chase bought the retail banking division of the Bank of New York, which then only months later merged with Pittsburgh-based Mellon Financial to form the present-day BNY Mellon.


title: Chase Bank

text: Chase National Bank was formed in 1877 by John Thompson. It was named after former United States Treasury Secretary and Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, although Chase did not have a connection with the bank.


title: Chase Bank

text: The Chase National Bank acquired a number of smaller banks in the 1920s through its Chase Securities Corporation. In 1926, for instance, it acquired Mechanics and Metals National Bank.


title: Chase Bank

text: However, its most significant acquisition was that of the Equitable Trust Company of New York in 1930, the largest stockholder of which was John D. Rockefeller, Jr. This made Chase the largest bank in the US and the world.


title: Chase Bank

text: Chase was primarily a wholesale bank dealing with other prominent financial institutions and major corporate clients such as General Electric, which had, through its RCA subsidiary, leased prominent space and become a crucial first tenant of Rockefeller Center. They rescued that major project in 1930. The bank is also closely associated with and has financed the oil industry, having longstanding connections with its board of directors to the successor companies of Standard Oil, especially ExxonMobil, which are also part of Rockefeller holdings.


title: Chase Bank

text: In 1955, Chase National Bank and The Manhattan Company merged to create the Chase Manhattan Bank. As Chase was a much larger bank, it was first intended that Chase acquire the "Bank of Manhattan", as it was nicknamed, but it transpired that Burr's original charter for the Manhattan Company had not only included the clause allowing it to start a bank with surplus funds, but another requiring unanimous consent of shareholders for the bank to be taken over. The deal was therefore structured as an acquisition by the Bank of the Manhattan Company of Chase National, with John J. McCloy becoming chairman of the merged entity. This avoided the need for unanimous consent by shareholders.


title: Chase Bank

text: For Chase Manhattan Bank's new logo, Chermayeff & Geismar designed a stylized octagon in 1961, which remains part of the bank's logo today. It has been reported that the Chase logo was a stylized representation of the primitive water pipes laid by the Manhattan Company, but this story was refuted in 2007 by Ivan Chermayeff himself. According to Chermayeff, the Chase logo was merely intended to be distinctive and geometric, and was not intended at all to resemble a cross-section of a wooden water pipe. According to Chase, the sides of the octagon represent forward motion, while the blank space in the middle suggests progress originates from the center; and is a single unit made up of separate parts, like the bank. The bank included an asset management business called the Chase Investors Management Corporation. Under McCloy's successor, George Champion, the bank relinquished its antiquated 1799 state charter for a modern one. In 1969, under the leadership of David Rockefeller, the bank became part of a bank holding company, the Chase Manhattan Corporation.


title: Chase Bank

text: The mergers and acquisitions during this period allowed Chase Manhattan to expand its influence over many non-financial corporations. A 1979 study titled "The Significance of Bank Control over Large Corporations" found that: "The Rockefeller-controlled Chase Manhattan Bank tops the list, controlling 16 companies." In 1985, Chase Manhattan expanded into Arizona by acquiring Continental Bank. In 1991, Chase Manhattan expanded into Connecticut by acquiring two insolvent banks.


title: Chase Bank

text: In August 1995, Chemical Bank of New York and Chase Manhattan Bank announced plans to merge. The merger was completed in August 1996. Chemical's previous acquisitions included Manufacturers Hanover Corporation, in 1991, and Texas Commerce Bank, in 1987. Although Chemical was the nominal survivor, the merged company retained the Chase name since not only was it better known (particularly outside the United States), but also the original charter of Chase required that the name be retained in any future business ventures. Hence, even today, it is known as JPMorgan Chase.


title: Chase Bank

text: In December 2000, the combined Chase Manhattan completed the acquisition of J.P. Morgan & Co. in one of the largest banking mergers to date. The combined company was renamed JPMorgan Chase. In 2004, the bank acquired Bank One, making Chase the largest credit card issuer in the United States. JPMorgan Chase added Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual to its acquisitions in 2008 and 2009 respectively. After closing nearly 400 overlapping branches of the combined company, less than 10% of its total, Chase will have approximately 5,410 branches in 23 states as of the closing date of the acquisition. According to data from SNL Financial (data as of June 30, 2008), this places Chase third behind Wells Fargo and Bank of America in terms of total U.S. retail bank branches.


title: Chase Bank

text: In October 2010, Chase was named in two lawsuits alleging manipulation of the silver market. The suits allege that by managing giant positions in silver futures and options, the banks influenced the prices of silver on the New York Stock Exchange's Comex Exchange since early 2008.


title: Chase Bank

text: The following is an illustration of the company's major mergers and acquisitions and historical predecessors to 1995 (this is not a comprehensive list):


title: Chase Bank

text: In 2004, JPMorgan Chase merged with Chicago-based Bank One Corp., bringing on board its current chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon as president and COO and designating him as CEO William B. Harrison, Jr.'s successor. Dimon's pay was pegged at 90% of Harrison's. Dimon quickly made his influence felt by embarking on a cost-cutting strategy and replaced former JPMorgan Chase executives in key positions with Bank One executives—many of whom were with Dimon at Citigroup. Dimon became CEO in January 2006 and chairman in December 2006 after Harrison's resignation.


title: Chase Bank

text: Bank One Corporation was formed upon the 1998 merger between Banc One of Columbus, Ohio and First Chicago NBD. These two large banking companies were themselves created through the merger of many banks. JPMorgan Chase completed the acquisition of Bank One in Q3 2004. The merger between Bank One and JPMorgan Chase meant that corporate headquarters were now in New York City while the retail bank operations of Chase were consolidated in Chicago.


title: Chase Bank

text: The following is an illustration of Bank One's major mergers and acquisitions and historical predecessors (this is not a comprehensive list):


title: Chase Bank

text: On September 25, 2008, JPMorgan Chase bought most banking operations of Washington Mutual from the receivership of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). That night, the Office of Thrift Supervision, in what was by far the largest bank failure in American history, seized Washington Mutual Bank and placed it into receivership. The FDIC sold the bank's assets, secured debt obligations and deposits to JPMorgan Chase Bank, NA for $1.888 billion, which re-opened the bank the following day. As a result of the takeover, Washington Mutual shareholders lost all their equity. Through the acquisition, JPMorgan became owner of the former accounts of Providian Financial, a credit card issuer WaMu acquired in 2005. The company completed the rebranding of Washington Mutual branches to Chase in late 2009.


title: Chase Bank

text: In the first quarter of 2006, Chase purchased Collegiate Funding Services, a portfolio company of private equity firm Lightyear Capital, for $663 million. CFS was used as the foundation for the Chase Student Loans, previously known as Chase Education Finance. In April of that same year, Chase acquired the Bank of New York Co.'s retail and small business banking network. This gave Chase access to 338 additional branches and 700,000 new customers in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Indiana.


title: Chase Bank

text: In 2019, Chase began opening retail branches in Pittsburgh and other areas within Western Pennsylvania; this coincided with Bank of America starting a similar expansion within the area the previous year. Even though Chase entered the market organically as opposed to a merger & acquisition, they still had to receive approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to open branches due to Chase's size as a whole. Before Chase and Bank of America expanded its retail presence into the market, Pittsburgh had been one of the largest U.S. cities without a retail presence from any of the "Big Four", with locally based PNC Financial Services (no. 6 nationally) having a commanding market share in the area. Chase had previously considered buying National City branches from PNC that were required for divesture following that bank's acquisition of National City in 2009, but were instead sold to First Niagara Bank (since absorbed into KeyBank); it had been speculated that PNC intentionally sold the branches to a much smaller competitor due to not wanting to compete with a "Big Four" bank in its home market.


title: Chase Bank

text: In August 2021, Chase announced that it was the first bank to have a retail presence in all 48 of the contiguous United States. The last state in the US to have a Chase branch was Montana, with the branch in Billings the first branch in the state.


title: Chase Bank

text: In September 2021, JPMorgan Chase entered the United Kingdom retail banking market by launching an app-based current account and Deposit account under the Chase brand. This is the company's first retail banking operation outside of the United States.


title: Chase Bank

text: A press release from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in 2004 announced that many of the new Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) files had become declassified. This declassification enabled the discovery that before and during the early years of World War II, the German government sold a special kind of Reichsmark, known as Rückwanderer [returnee] Marks, to American citizens of German descent. Chase National Bank, along with other businesses, were involved in these transactions. Through Chase, this allowed Nazi sympathizers to purchase Marks with dollars at a discounted rate. Specifically, "The financial houses understood that the German government paid the commissions (to its agents, including Chase) through the sale of discounted, blocked Marks that came mainly from Jews who had fled Germany." In other words, Nazi Germany was able to offer these Marks below face-value because they had been stolen from émigrés fleeing the Nazi regime. Between 1936 and 1941, the Nazis amassed over $20 million, and the businesses enabling these transactions earned $1.2 million in commissions. Of these commissions, over $500,000 went to Chase National Bank and its subagents.


title: Chase Bank

text: These facts were discovered when the FBI began its investigation in October 1940. The purpose of the investigation was to follow German-Americans who had bought the Marks. However, Chase National Bank's executives were never federally prosecuted because Chase's lead attorney threatened to reveal FBI, Army, and Navy "sources and methods" in court. Publicly naming the sources and methods could have posed security risks and threatened future intelligence gathering. To avoid such revelations, the executives' violations of the Johnson Act, the Espionage Act, and the Foreign Agents Registration Act were never prosecuted.


title: Chase Bank

text: Besides the controversial Rückwanderer Mark Scheme, NARA records also revealed another controversy during the occupation of France by the Nazis. From the late 1930s until June 14, 1941, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) issued an Executive Order freezing German assets, Chase National Bank worked with the Nazi government. The order blocking any access to French accounts in the U.S. by anyone, but especially by the Nazis was issued by Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau Jr., with the approval of FDR. Within hours of the order, Chase unblocked the accounts and the funds were transferred through South America to Nazi Germany.


title: Chase Bank

text: U.S. Treasury officials wanted an investigation of French subsidiaries of American banks, including: Chase Bank, J.P. Morgan & Co, National City Corporation, Guaranty Bank, Bankers Trust, and American Express. Of these banks, only Chase and Morgan remained open in France during the Nazi occupation. The Chase branch chief in Paris, France, Carlos Niedermann, told his supervisor in New York that there had been an "expansion of deposits". Also, Niedermann was, "very vigorous in enforcing restrictions against Jewish property, even going so far as to refuse to release funds belonging to Jews in anticipation that a decree with retroactive provisions prohibiting such release might be published in the near future by the occupying Nazi authorities" .


title: Chase Bank

text: In 1998, Chase general counsel William McDavid said that Chase did not have control over Niedermann. Whether that claim was true or not, Chase Manhattan Bank acknowledged seizing about 100 accounts during the Vichy regime. Kenneth McCallion, a partner in the New York firm Goodkind Labaton Rudoff & Sucharow, led a lawsuit against Barclays Bank for the illegal seizure of assets during World War Two and has since turned his attention toward Chase. The World Jewish Congress (WJC), entered into discussions with Chase and a spokesperson for the WJC said, "Nobody at Chase today is guilty. They were not involved in whatever happened, but they do accept that they have an institutional responsibility." A Chase spokesman said, "This is a moral issue that we take very seriously." Chase general counsel McDavid added, "that Chase intends to compensate Jewish account holders whose assets were illegally plundered". In 1999, the French government formed a commission to report findings to Prime Minister Lionel Jospin. , a commission member and history professor at the Sorbonne, said that under the Vichy regime, French banks received visits from Nazi officials but U.S. banks did not. At that time, they did not have to report Jewish accounts, but they did just as the French banks did. She goes on to say that an American ambassador protected the U.S. subsidiaries.


title: Chase Bank

text: In May 1999, Chase Manhattan reached a settlement with 20 plaintiffs who filed an asset reparations lawsuit, such as the Claims Conference, a Jewish restitution organization, and the WJC. The settlement subjected Chase to an independent probe of its conduct of activity which occurred from the company's offices in Paris and Châteauneuf-sur-Cher, in southern France, during the World War II-era. The settlement also made possible the company having to eventually a pay modest but symbolically important, payouts to former Chase customers after the probe was completed. It was determined that Chase only owned a sum that was well under $1 million in asset reparations by this point in time. The settlement made Chase Manhattan the first bank to reach a settlement over Holocaust-related claims.


title: Chase Bank

text: In February 2000, more than fifty years after information regarding the ties between Chase and Nazi Germany was revealed during Congressional hearings, Chase Manhattan publicly acknowledged the deal its predecessor Chase National Bank made with Nazi Germany which helped the German government exchange marks and which also likely originated from the forced sale of assets by Jewish refugees.


title: Chase Bank

text: JPMorgan Chase has paid $16 billion in fines, settlements, and other litigation expenses from 2011 to 2013. Of the $16 billion JPMorgan Chase has paid, about $8.5 billion were for fines and settlements resulting from illegal actions taken by bank executives, according to Richard Eskow at the Campaign for America's Future, who cited a new report from Joshua Rosner of Graham Fisher & Co.


title: Chase Bank

text: The $16 billion total does not include a recent settlement that calls for JPMorgan Chase to pay $100 million to waive $417 million in claims it had made against clients of the firm MF Global.


title: Chase Bank

text: The U.S. Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control found that JPMorgan had illegally aided dictatorships in Cuba, Sudan, Liberia and Iran, including transferring 32,000 ounces of gold bullion (valued at approximately $20,560,000) to the benefit of a bank in Iran. JPMorgan did not voluntarily self-disclose the Iranian matter to OFAC.


title: Chase Bank

text: During 2013 and 2014, Chase and other banks received media attention for the practice of canceling the personal and business accounts of hundreds of legal sex workers, citing in some instances the "morality clause" of their account agreement. Later it was discovered that this practice included mortgage accounts and business loans. Chase canceled the mortgage refinancing process for one individual, that the bank had initiated, whose production company made soft core films like those broadcast on Cinemax. This resulted in a lawsuit which cited evasive dealings and misleading statements by several Chase executives including Securities Vice President Adam Gelcich, Legal Fair Lending Department Vice President Deb Vincent, and an unnamed executive director and assistant general counsel.


title: Chase Bank

text: In addition to closing accounts for sex workers, the bank has also been using its "morality clause" to disassociate from other types of businesses. Some of these other businesses include medical marijuana dispensaries and any that are "gun related". Another was a woman-owned condom manufacturing company called Lovability Condoms. Company founder Tiffany Gaines was rejected by Chase Paymentech services "as processing sales for adult-oriented products is a prohibited vertical" and was told that it was a "reputational risk" to process payment for condoms. Gaines then started a petition to ask Chase to review and change its policy of classifying condoms as an "adult oriented product". The bank later reversed its decision and invited Gaines to submit an application citing that was already doing business with a "wide variety of merchants, including grocers and drug stores, that sell similar products".


title: Chase Bank

text: In 2019, the bank faced growing criticism for its alleged practice of arbitrarily targeting the personal accounts of outspoken online personalities such as Martina Markota and Proud Boys chairman Enrique Tarrio. Although the specific motives behind the closures were not officially disclosed the assumption among many on the right was that they were political in nature.


title: Chase Bank

text: Financial documents from Energy Transfer Partners, the pipeline builder for the Dakota Access Pipeline, lists a number of large banking institutions that have provided credit for the project, including JP Morgan Chase. Because of these financial ties, Chase and other banks were a target of the Dakota Access Pipeline protests during 2016 and 2017.


title: Chase Bank

text: JPMorgan Chase agreed to pay $5 million to compensate their male employees who did not receive the same paid parental leave as women from 2011 to 2017. In December 2017, the bank "clarified its policy to ensure equal access to men and women looking to be their new child's main caregiver". According to the involved attorneys, this is the biggest recorded settlement in a U.S. parental leave discrimination case. JPMorgan agreed to train and monitor to ensure equal parental leave benefits and stated that "its policy was always intended to be gender-neutral".


title: Chase Bank

text: Chase has faced criticism and protests over its high rate of investment in various fossil fuel industries such as coal, oil, and gas. A study released in October 2019 indicated that Chase invests more ($75 billion) in fossil fuels than any other bank.


title: Chase Bank

text: An analysis of home purchases in Chicago from 2012 to 2018 by City Bureau and WBEZ Chicago showed that JP Morgan Chase, "loaned 41 times more in Chicago’s white neighborhoods than it did in the city’s black neighborhoods." The report prompted protests at Chicago Chase branches in June 2020. At a reopening of a remodeled Chase branch in Chicago's South Shore, Dimon said via video, "we have targets now to do $600 million (over the next five years) in new mortgages for Blacks and new homeowners in Chicago neighborhoods."


title: Demographics of Germany

text: The demography of Germany is monitored by the "Statistisches Bundesamt" (Federal Statistical Office of Germany). According to the most recent data, Germany's population is 84,079,811 (30 June 2022) making it the most populous country in the European Union, and the nineteenth-most populous country in the world. The total fertility rate was rated at 1.58 in 2021, which is far below the replacement rate of 2.1. For a long time Germany had one of the world's lowest fertility rates of around 1.3 to 1.4 however there has been a small increase in recent years. Due to the low birth rate there have been more deaths than births in Germany in every year since 1972, which means 2021 was the 50th consecutive year the German population would have decreased without immigration. But due to immigration the population has actually increased during the last half-century: in 2019 the number of people with a foreign background was 26%. Under this category there are counted foreigners, naturalized citizens, ethnic German repatriates from east Europe and their children.


title: Demographics of Germany

text: Until the early 20th century Germany was also a large emigrant nation with 5 million people emigrating to the US alone from Germany in the Kaiserreich boundaries in the 19th century and more than two million in the 20th century plus additional emigrants to Latin America, Canada and eastern Europe. However after World War II immigration began to outweigh emigration, as around 14 million ethnic Germans were expelled from the former eastern Provinces of the Reich and other areas in eastern Europe of whom around 12 million made their way to present day Germany and several hundred thousand to Austria and other countries while several hundred thousand died. Some additional 4.5 million ethnic Germans from eastern Europe repatriated after 1950, especially around the end of the Eastern Bloc and mostly from the former Soviet Union, Poland and Romania.


title: Demographics of Germany

text: Large-scale immigration to West Germany began during the time of the Wirtschaftswunder from the 1950s to early 1970s when Germany had a shortage of workers and let in Southern Europeans from countries like Turkey, Italy and Spain on a temporary basis as guest workers. The liberalisation of guest worker legislation allowed many to stay and build a life in West Germany. Another large wave of immigration happened around reunification when a large group of German repatriates but also many refugees arrived mostly from former Yugoslavia due to the Yugoslav War and Bosnian War and from Turkey seeking asylum in Germany. The next large immigration wave began after eastern Expansion of the European Union in 2011 as Eastern Europeans were now allowed to live and work in Germany without a visa. In 2015 Germany took in what was, in EU terms, a relatively large number of refugees fleeing the Syrian civil war but also other conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan: 476,649 asylum seekers in 2015, 745,545 in 2016 and declining numbers after that.


title: Demographics of Germany

text: Germany has one of the world's highest levels of education, technological development, and economic productivity. Since the end of World War II, the number of students entering university has more than tripled, and the trade and technical schools are among the world's best. With a per capita income of about €40,883 in 2018, Germany is a broadly middle-class society. However, there has been a strong increase in the number of children living in poverty. In 1965, one in 75 children was on the welfare rolls; but by 2007 this had increased to one child in six. These children live in relative poverty, but not necessarily in absolute poverty. Millions of Germans travel overseas each year. The social welfare system provides for universal health care, unemployment compensation, child benefits and other social programmes. Germany's aging population and struggling economy strained the welfare system in the 1990s, so the government adopted a wide-ranging programme of – still controversial – belt-tightening reforms, Agenda 2010, including the labour-market reforms known as Hartz concept.


title: Demographics of Germany

text: After the World War II border shifts and expulsions, the Germans from Central and Eastern Europe and the former eastern territories moved westward to post-war Germany. During the partition of Germany, many Germans from East Germany fled to West Germany for political and economic reasons. Since Germany's reunification, there are ongoing migrations from the eastern "New Länder" to the western "Old Länder" for economic reasons.


title: Demographics of Germany

text: The Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic followed different paths when it came to demographics. The politics of the German Democratic Republic was pronatalistic while that of the Federal Republic was compensatory.


title: Demographics of Germany

text: Fertility in the GDR was higher than that in the FRG. Demographic politics was only one of the reasons. Women in the GDR had fewer "biographic options", young motherhood was expected of them. State funded costfree childcare was available to all mothers.


title: Demographics of Germany

text: Note: Berlin is included into East Germany for the year 2002 and 2008. Source: Kreyenfeld (2002); Kreyenfeld et al. (2010); HFD Germany (2010)


title: Demographics of Germany

text: About 1.7 million people have left the new federal states (the East) since the fall of the Berlin Wall, or 12% of the population; a disproportionately high number of them were women under 35.


title: Demographics of Germany

text: After 1990, the total fertility rate (TFR) in the East dropped to 0.772 in 1994. This has been attributed to a "demographic shock": people not only had fewer children, they were also less likely to marry or divorce after the end of the GDR; the biographic options of the citizens of the former GDR had increased. Young motherhood seemed to be less attractive and the age of the first birth rose sharply.


title: Demographics of Germany

text: In the following years, the TFR in the East started to rise again, surpassing 1.0 in 1997 and 1.3 in 2004, and reaching the West's TFR (1.37) in 2007. In 2010, the East's fertility rate (1.459) clearly exceeded that of the West (1.385), while Germany's overall TFR had risen to 1.393, the highest value since 1990, which was still far below the natural replacement rate of 2.1 and the birth rates seen under communism. In 2016, the TFR was 1.64 in the East and 1.60 in the West.


title: Demographics of Germany

text: In some regions the number of women between the ages of 20 and 30 has dropped by more than 30%. In 2004, in the age group 18–29 (statistically important for starting families) there were only 90 women for every 100 men in the new federal states (the East, including Berlin).


title: Demographics of Germany

text: Until 2007 family politics in the federal republic was compensatory, which means that poor families received more family benefits (such as the "Erziehungsgeld") than rich ones. In 2007 the so-called "Elterngeld" was introduced. According to Christoph Butterwegge the Elterngeld was meant to "motivate highly educated women to have more children"; the poor on the other hand were disadvantaged by the "Elterngeld", and now received lower child benefits than the middle classes. The very well-off (who earn more than 250.000 Euro per annum) and those on welfare receive no Elterngeld payments.


title: Demographics of Germany

text: In the new federal states the fertility rate of college-educated women is now higher than that of those without college degrees. Differences in value priorities and the better availability of childcare in the eastern states are discussed as possible reasons.


title: Demographics of Germany

text: In 2019, the non-profit Austrian Institute of Economic Research and the Bertelsmann Stiftung published a study about the economic impact of demographics. The researchers assume a reduction in the per capita income of €3,700 until 2040.


title: Demographics of Germany

text: The contemporary demographics of Germany used to also be measured by a series of full censuses mandated by the state, with the most recent held in 1987. Since reunification, German authorities rely on a "micro census".


title: Demographics of Germany

text: Demographic statistics according to the World Population Review. Due to the privacy concerns of the German population after reunification, Germany didn't hold a regular census until the EU-mandated 2011 German Census. The requirement was met with large disapproval. As required by the EU, Germany now continues to hold censuses every 10 years.


title: Demographics of Germany

text: The total fertility rate is the number of children born per woman. It is based on fairly good data for the entire period. Sources: Our World In Data and Gapminder Foundation.


title: Demographics of Germany

text: Population statistics since 1817. Territorial changes of Germany occurred in 1866 (establishment of North German Confederation, 1871 (German unification and annexation of Alsace-Lorraine), 1918/1919, 1921/1922, 1945/1946 and in 1990. Death data is incomplete for both world wars, especially WWII.


title: Demographics of Germany

text: In 2020, 586,421 (75.8%) children were born to mothers with German citizenship, while 91,872 (11.9%) children were born to mothers with European citizenship (excluding Turkey) and 94,851 (12.3%) children were born to mothers with other citizenship.


title: Demographics of Germany

text: In 2021, 605,703 (76.1%) children were born to mothers with German citizenship, while 95,282 (12%) children were born to mothers with European citizenship (excluding Turkey) and 94,532 (11.9%) children were born to mothers with other citizenship.


title: Demographics of Germany

text: Most childbirths in Germany happen within marriage. Out of 778,080 births in 2019 258,835 were to unmarried parents, which means that around 33% or one third of the children are born out of wedlock, while two thirds are within. This percentage of unmarried birth has long been growing and reached 33% in 2010, more than twice of what it was in 1990. However in recent years it has started to stagnate or even decrease.


title: Demographics of Germany

text: The Mikrozensus done in 2008 revealed that the number of children a German woman aged 40 to 75 had, was closely linked to her educational achievement.


title: Demographics of Germany

text: In Western Germany the most educated women were the most likely to be childless. 26% of those groups stated they were childless, while 16% of those having an intermediate education, and 11% of those having compulsory education, stated the same.


title: Demographics of Germany

text: In Eastern Germany however, 9% of the most educated women of that age group and 7% of those who had an intermediary education were childless, while 12% of those having only compulsory education were childless.


title: Demographics of Germany

text: The reason for that east-western difference is that the GDR had an "educated mother scheme" and actively tried to encourage first births among the more educated. It did so by propagandizing the opinion that every educated woman should "present at least one child to socialism" and also by financially rewarding its more educated citizen to become parents. The government especially tried to persuade students to become parents while still in college and it was quite successful in doing so. In 1986 38% of all women, who were about to graduate from college, were mothers of at least one child and additional 14% were pregnant and 43% of all men, who were about to graduate from college, were fathers of at least one child. There was a sharp decline in the birth rate and especially in the birth rate of the educated after the fall of the Berlin wall. Nowadays, 5% of those about to graduate from college are parents.


title: Demographics of Germany

text: The more educated a Western German mother aged 40 to 75 was in 2008, the less likely she was to have a big family.


title: Demographics of Germany

text: In 2011, this trend was reversed in Eastern Germany, where more highly educated women now had a somewhat higher fertility rate than the rest of the population.


title: Demographics of Germany

text: Persons who said they had no religion tend to have fewer children than those who identify as Christians, and studies also found that conservative-leaning Christians had more children compared to liberal-leaning Christians.


title: Demographics of Germany

text: A study done in 2005 in the western German state of Nordrhein-Westfalen by the HDZ revealed that childlessness was especially widespread among scientists. It showed that 78% of the women scientists and 71% of the male scientists working in that state were childless.


title: Demographics of Germany

text: Germany does not collect data on the ethnic and racial identifications of its citizens, but does collect data on the background group by birth of an individual. The Federal Statistical Office defines persons with a migrant background as all persons who migrated to the present area of the Federal Republic of Germany after 1949, plus all foreign nationals born in Germany and all persons born in Germany as German nationals with at least one parent who migrated to Germany or was born in Germany as a foreign national. The figures presented here are based on this definition only.


title: Demographics of Germany

text: In 2010, 2.3 million families with children under 18 years were living in Germany, in which at least one parent had foreign roots. They represented 29% of the total of 8.1 million families with minor children. Compared with 2005 – the year when the microcensus started to collect detailed information on the population with a migrant background – the proportion of migrant families has risen by 2 percentage points. In 2019, 40% children under 5 years old had migrant background.


title: Demographics of Germany

text: Most of the families with a migrant background live in the western part of Germany. In 2010, the proportion of migrant families in all families was 32% in the former territory of the Federal Republic. This figure was more than double that in the new Länder (incl. Berlin) where it stood at 15%.Eastern Germany has a much lower proportion of immigrants than the West, as the GDR did not let in that many guest workers and Eastern Germany's is not doing as good as West Germany's and had a higher percentage of jobless persons until recently. However in recent years the number of people with an immigrant background in East Germany has been growing as refugees (as well as German Repatriates) are distributed with the Königssteiner Schlüssel, so every German state has to take the same number of them compared to its population and economy. In 2019 19.036 million people or 89,6% of people with an immigrant background live in Western Germany (excluding Berlin), being 28,7% of its population, while 1.016 million people with immigrant background 4,8% live in Eastern States, being 8,2% of population, and 1.194 million people with an immigrant background 5,6% live in Berlin, being 33,1% of its population.


title: Demographics of Germany

text: In 2019, 26% of Germans of any age group (up from 18,4% in 2008) and 39% of German children (up from 30% in 2008) had at least one parent born abroad. Average age for Germans with at least one parent born abroad was 35.6 years (up from 33.8 years in 2008), while that for Germans, who had two parents born in Germany was 47.3 years (up from 44.6 in 2008).


title: Demographics of Germany

text: The largest groups of people with an immigrant background in Germany are people that have Turkey, Poland and Russia as their ancestral homelands.


title: Demographics of Germany

text: Four other sizable groups of people are referred to as "national minorities" ("nationale Minderheiten") because they have lived in their respective regions for centuries: Danes, Frisians, Roma and Sinti, and Sorbs. There is a Danish minority (about 50,000, according to government sources) in the northernmost state of Schleswig-Holstein. Eastern and Northern Frisians live at Schleswig-Holstein's western coast, and in the north-western part of Lower Saxony. They are part of a wider community (Frisia) stretching from Germany to the northern Netherlands. The Sorbs, a Slavic people with about 60,000 members (according to government sources), are in the Lusatia region of Saxony and Brandenburg. They are the last remnants of the Slavs that lived in central and eastern Germany since the 7th century to have kept their traditions and not been completely integrated into the wider German nation.


title: Demographics of Germany

text: Until World War II the Poles were recognized as one of the national minorities. In 1924 the Union of Poles in Germany had initiated cooperation between all national minorities in Germany under the umbrella organization Association of National Minorities in Germany. Some of the union members wanted the Polish communities in easternmost Germany (now Poland) to join the newly established Polish nation after World War I. Even before the German invasion of Poland, leading anti-Nazi members of the Polish minority were deported to concentration camps; some were executed at the Piaśnica murder site. Minority rights for Poles in Germany were revoked by Hermann Göring's World War II decree of 27 February 1940, and their property was confiscated.


title: Demographics of Germany

text: After the war ended, the German government did not re-implement national minority rights for ethnic Poles. The reason for this is that the areas of Germany which formerly had a native Polish minority were annexed to Poland and the Soviet Union, while almost all of the native German populations (formerly the ethnic majority) in these areas subsequently fled or were expelled by force. With the mixed German-Polish territories now lost, the German government subsequently regarded ethnic Poles residing in what remained of Germany as immigrants, just like any other ethnic population with a recent history of arrival. In contrast, Germans living in Poland are recognized as national minority and have granted seats in Polish Parliament. It must be said, however, that an overwhelming number of Germans in Poland have centuries-old historical ties to the lands they now inhabit, whether from living in territory that once belonged to the German state, or from centuries-old communities. In contrast, most Poles in present-day Germany are recent immigrants, though there are some communities which have been present since the 19th and perhaps even the 18th centuries. Despite protests by some in the older Polish-German communities, and despite Germany being now a signatory to the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, Germany has so far refused to re-implement minority rights for ethnic Poles, based on the fact that almost all areas of historically mixed German-Polish heritage (where the minority rights formerly existed) are no longer part of Germany and because the vast majority of ethnic Poles now residing in Germany are recent immigrants.


title: Demographics of Germany

text: Roma people have been in Germany since the Middle Ages. They were persecuted by the Nazis, and thousands of Roma living in Germany were killed by the Nazi regime. Nowadays, they are spread all over Germany, mostly living in major cities. It is difficult to estimate their exact number, as the German government counts them as "persons without migrant background" in their statistics. There are also many assimilated Sinti and Roma. A vague figure given by the German Department of the Interior is about 70,000. In contrast to the old-established Roma population, the majority of them do not have German citizenship, and are classified as immigrants or refugees.


title: Demographics of Germany

text: After World War II, 14 million ethnic Germans were expelled from the eastern territories of Germany and homelands outside the former German Empire. The accommodation and integration of these "Heimatvertriebene" in the remaining part of Germany, in which many cities and millions of apartments had been destroyed, was a major effort in the post-war occupation zones and later states of Germany.


title: Demographics of Germany

text: Since the 1960s, ethnic Germans from the People's Republic of Poland and Soviet Union (especially from Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine), have come to Germany. During the time of Perestroika, and after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the number of immigrants increased heavily. Some of these immigrants are of mixed ancestry. During the 10-year period between 1987 and 2001, a total of 1,981,732 ethnic Germans from the FSU immigrated to Germany, along with more than a million of their non-German relatives. After 1997, however ethnic Slavs or those belonging to Slavic-Germanic mixed origins outnumbered those with only Germanic descent amongst the immigrants. The total number of people currently living in Germany having FSU connection is around 4 to 4.5 million (Including Germans, Slavs, Jews, and those of mixed origins), out of that more than 50% are of German descent.


title: Demographics of Germany

text: Germany now has Europe's third-largest Jewish population. In 2004, twice as many Jews from former Soviet republics settled in Germany as in Israel, bringing the total inflow to more than 100,000 since 1991. Jews have a voice in German public life through the Central Council of Jews in Germany (Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland). Some Jews from the former Soviet Union are of mixed heritage.