Hidden in plain sight
Subtitle: what really caused the world's worst financial crisis and why it could happen again
By: Peter J. Wallison
Edition: First paperback edition.
Publisher: Encounter Books
Published: 2016
Language: eng
Number of pages: 411
ISBN-13: 9781594038655
Subjects: Government policy; Finance; Subprime mortgage loans; Housing; Mortgage loans; Economic policy; Financial crises; Global Financial Crisis, 2008-2009
Description: The 2008 financial crisis, like the Great Depression, was a world-historical event. What caused it will be debated for years, if not generations. The conventional narrative is that the financial crisis was caused by Wall Street greed and insufficient regulation of the financial system. That narrative produced the Dodd-Frank Act, the most comprehensive financial-system regulation since the New Deal. There is evidence, however, that the Dodd-Frank Act has slowed the recovery from the recession. If insufficient regulation caused the financial crisis, then the Dodd-Frank Act will never be modified or repealed; proponents will argue that doing so will cause another crisis.
Notes: With new preface.

"First American edition published in 2015 by Encounter Books"--Title-page verso.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 363-392) and index.
Table of contents: title: Part I. The basics. Introduction : what really caused the world's worst financial crisis and why it could happen again; title: The difference between prime and nontraditional mortgages : the importance of sound underwriting standards; title: The financial crisis inquiry commission report an other explanations for the crisis : why conventional explanations for the crisis are inadequate; title: A short history of housing finance in the U.S. : how and why housing finance was substantially changed in 1992; title: Part II. Government housing policies take effect. HUD's central role : how HUD used the Affordable-Housing goals to reduce underwriting standards; title: The decline in underwriting standards : how the Affordable-Housing goals forced an increase in nontraditional mortgages; title: Force fed : why the Affordable-housing goals, and not market share or profit, were the sole reason the GSEs acquired nontraditional mortgages; title: Going viral : why and how reduced underwriting standards spread to the wider market; title: Part III. The financial crisis and its accelerants. The great housing price bubble : how loosened underwriting standards stimulated its growth; title: Flying blind into a storm : how the GSEs' failure to disclose their acquisition of nontraditional mortgages magnified the crisis; title: 31 million nontraditional mortgages precipitate a crisis : why even government-backed mortgage securities were contributors; title: Fair-value accounting scales up the crisis : how mark-to-market accounting made financial firms look weak or unstable; title: Part IV. From bad to worse. From bad to worse : how government blunders turned a mortgage meltdown into an investor panic and financial crisis; title: The false narrative and the future : why the failure to understand the causes of the crisis may lead to another.