Title: What caused the financial crisis /
Authors: Friedman, Jeffrey, 1959-
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press,
Year: 2011
Subjects: Financial crises United States History; Finance United States History; United States Economic policy
Abstract: The deflation of the subprime mortgage bubble in 2006-7 is widely agreed to have been the immediate cause of the collapse of the financial sector in 2008. Consequently, one might think that uncovering the origins of subprime lending would make the root causes of the crisis obvious. That is essentially where public debate about the causes of the crisis began-and ended-in the month following the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and the 502-point fall in the Dow Jones Industrial Average in mid-September 2008. However, the subprime housing bubble is just one piece of the puzzle. Asset bubbles inflate and burst frequently, but severe worldwide recessions are rare. What was different this time? In "What Caused the Financial Crisis" leading economists and scholars delve into the major causes of the worst financial collapse since the Great Depression and, together, present a comprehensive picture of the factors that led to it. One essay examines the role of government regulation in expanding home ownership through mortgage subsidies for impoverished borrowers, encouraging the subprime housing bubble. Another explores how banks were able to securitize mortgages by manipulating criteria used for bond ratings. How this led to inaccurate risk assessments that could not be covered by sufficient capital reserves mandated under the Basel accords is made clear in a third essay. Other essays identify monetary policy in the United States and Europe, corporate pay structures, credit-default swaps, banks' leverage, and financial deregulation as possible causes of the crisis. -- Back cover.
Contents: Capitalism and the crisis : bankers, bonuses, ideology, and ignorance / Jeffrey Friedman -- An accident waiting to happen : securities regulation and financial deregulation / Amar Bhid -- Monetary policy, credit extension, and housing bubbles : 2008 and 1929 / Steven Gjerstad and Vernon L. Smith -- The anatomy of a murder : who killed the American economy? / Joseph E. Stiglitz -- Monetary policy, economic policy, and the financial crisis : an empirical analysis of what went wrong / John B. Taylor -- Housing initiatives and other policy factors / Peter J. Wallison -- How securitization concentrated risk in the financial sector / Viral V. Acharya and Matthew Richardson -- A regulated meltdown : the Basel rules and banks' leverage / Juliusz Jablecki and Mateusz Machaj -- The credit-rating agencies and the subprime debacle / Lawrence J. White -- Credit-default swaps and the crisis / Peter J. Wallison -- The crisis of 2008 : lessons for and from economics / Daron Acemoglu -- The financial crisis and the systemic failure of the economics profession / David Colander ... [et al.] -- Afterword : the causes of the financial crisis / Richard A. Posner.