I expected the failed institutions to literally be seized, and an orderly re-distribution of assets processed. I also expected, as a result, a correction in the price of housing to actually realistic levels.
I was extremely naive about the housing issue; I had not realized how artificially constrained the markets were and how (at least in the US if not elsewhere) government regulations continue to distort the market towards artificial shortage.
It all needs to be repaired and re-worked, but regulatory capture and conflict of voter interest by those who've made it in to the 'I have mine' status is far too systemic.
I suspect this is the great Faustian bargain of the boomer generation. All the wealth that they helped themselves to in lieu of fixing the big systemic problems in economy and government will be traded away in the end for the modicum of comfort in their twilight years that a better functioning system would have provided anyway.
Yes, the self-serving regulatory system that was repeatedly taken advantage of to benefit a small group of property owners in previous generations will be solved by the next generation who will inherit or earn properties of their own... /s
When power repeatedly corrupts those whose define the rules then maybe the solution is stop stop giving them power? Or at a minimum limit their power...instead of handing it to the next guy with no changes and expecting different results.
You realise that a large chunk of the assets were bank deposits of ordinary people and businesses, and that it was judged that having none of the payments infrastructure working for months would be a far worse outcome? It was absolutely critical to keep the system functioning. Arguably more should have been nationalised in the manner of RBS, though. And more should have gone to jail for robosigning.
The QE123 fix had little to do with regulations, and everything to do with money connected to power structures in the US...
The one big unnoted loss is of many individual lendees who had their equity taken in foreclosure, while the issuing banks had all the effects of their bad judgements pulled off their books by the fed. In effect this give banks an immediate cash boost and indefinite timeline to work out liquidity issues while countless individuals were left to the whims of the economic downturn with little gov't backing and much less time or resources.
1) Greed is a constant. Everyone is greedy, and there's zero evidence that "greed on Wall Street" increased before or during the crisis, nor that it could be reduced. To a first approximation, "greed" has no explanatory power in cases like this, and to the extent "greed" does have explanatory power, it is a constant you need to work around. People like money, power, and prestige; this isn't news.
2) What misidentification of risk? That's the criticism of bailouts; private individuals got all the upside, and the public wore the downside. For the people who benefited from this, they correctly identified that their risk was zero. Why was it zero? Government regulation.
If we lived in a world where people consciously took crazy risks and suffered huge losses trying to win outsize profits...sure. But we don't live in that world. The financial crisis was about systemic problems, underappreciated tail risk, black swan events, privatized gains, and socialised losses.
> as well as firewalls between banks and financial investment firms.
There's neither evidence nor a plausible story on how this might have had an impact. The biggest failures were banks that existed on one side or the other of the old Glass-Steagall lines. Countrywide had no investment banking operations; AIG wasn't a bank; Bear Stearns wasn't a retail bank. And we saw the same pattern overseas, where the old Glass-Steagall never applied to start with. How does the failure of Northern Rock (a retail bank that originated too many bad mortgages and blew up due to a bank run) tie in, considering it wouldn't have violated that firewall if it had been in the US, and it was in the UK which never had that rule to start with? How would a law preventing retail banks getting into investment banking or insurance have helped any of those institutions? Conversely the banks that weathered it best were diversified institutions that would have been banned under the old rules.
It's the misidentification of risk before the crash. The financial companies had a vast conspiracy to misinform the public,and the government and conservative politicians and commentators helped them out. Of course Wall Street is greedy, but the government is supposed to stop that from leading it to do things that harm the country.
More arguments on both sides here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass%E2%80%93Steagall:_afterm...
Not, in my view, among actual experts if you review the literature, but whatever.
> I think that that allowing mortgage originators with securities packaging underwriters into the same room in the same company has a lower degree of scrutiny than the same thing happening separately in two separate companies and separate products.
Great story, but you could just as easily tell a story about originators from one bank trying to stiff underwriters from another with toxic loans, while an integrated bank works together and doesn't make bad loans to start with. You need to look at what happened, not what plausibly could have happened.
So let's look at what actually happened with, say, IndyMac. As one history of of the crisis put it[1]:
> ...the terms of Glass-Steagall allowed banks to securitize their loans and sell them in that form, but they were not allowed to underwrite or deal in mortgage-backed securities (MBS). Banks could nevertheless buy MBS as investments and sell them whenever it suited their investment strategy, or when they required cash.
And then when discussing IndyMac:
> IndyMac [...] pursued an aggressive growth strategy. [...] The bank originated or bought loans, securitized them, and sold them to other banks, thrifts, or investment banks, but held the mortgage-servicing rights. [...] IndyMac concentrated on adjustable interest rate mortgages (ARMs), including ones in which the minimum payment did not cover the monthly interest payment; 75 percent of IndyMac’s borrowers were only making the minimum payment. IndyMac also specialized in Alt-A loans, which only required the minimum documentation verifying the borrower’s income — and sometimes not even that. These loans were very profitable for the company. [...] Crucially, IndyMac did not engage in any investment bank activity, and all of its activities would have been allowed under the original Glass-Steagall Act.
IndyMac seems to me to be an iconic example of the crisis; they were a pure-play retail bank that gambled heavily on originating extraordinarily crap mortgages which they then sliced, diced, and sold on to suckers. Some of those suckers ended up being pure-play investment banks like Bear Stearns or Lehman Brothers; when the crisis hit they all went under. All of which was bad! Much of it should probably have been illegal. Thankfully some of it is now illegal due to Dodd-Frank. But crucially none of this would have been prevented by Glass-Steagall, or was allowed by Gramm–Leach–Bliley. For good or ill, originating bad loans and then selling them to third-party suckers is simply not a thing that Glass-Steagall tried to prevent.
So when you say:
> I think that that allowing mortgage originators with securities packaging underwriters into the same room in the same company has a lower degree of scrutiny
I don't think that story seems to have much relation to IndyMac. My story - of independent originators dumping toxic waste onto an unsuspecting market - seems to have a lot more relevance.
[1] https://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/repeal-gla... (Yes, a think tank, yes, with a bias. Check the facts before blindly trusting.)
I find it curious the number of comments
blaming government regulation
Housing prices were realistic. We know this because most of the Anglophone world has had similar experiences with housing prices without the "bubble" bursting, and because prices have gone back to where we started back before everything blew up.
There were bad loans, and financial products that were fraudulently repackaging them. Regulators were asleep at the wheel. And the government has played a huge part in getting housing prices to high levels. But the value of the homes themselves was and is clearly real because people remain willing to pay for them.
You call house prices 6-10 times [1] the family annual income reasonable? What planet are you from?
[1] In areas where people actually want to live in Canada, like B.C. or Ontario
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/personal-fina...
You can be an autoparts manufacturer whose line of credit got stopped because of a global credit crisis.
You can be a student with a job lined up who happened to graduate in 2009 and have your offer revoked.
The market isn't a meritocracy.
Banks go out of business if they get a reputation for defaulting on depositors' accounts. After all, would you deposit money in such a bank? I wouldn't, either. Depositors would still have legal recourse against the bank, too.
The banks do a lot of marketing telling you how much they are "friends" of business, "there to help you grow", etc. It is utter nonsense.
Never mistake a banker as a friend. If their incentives so dictate, it'll only take a New York Minute to stab you in the back.
Edit: typos
For a more specific answer to your points, the free market is not a guarantee. It's probabilities. There are no risk-free actions, and you're not doing "everything right" if you fail to take that into account.
What matters is how and when the anger of those being stepped on fully manifests itself. Anyone who wants to protect "Capitalism" really ought to be frantically doing everything they can do to promote UBI or at least Universal Health Care and Education.
No. K-12 doesn't qualify you for a job in the "modern economy."
The sad thing is it's not even about the education: companies only look for the degree.
And not when it means that we aren't actually getting the best candidates for certain fields. To be a doctor, not only do you have to have the intellectual capability, but the financial ability as well. Yes, I know there are loans, but burdening folks with debt deters some folks from even trying... let alone the expenses required to apply and attend college.
Nothing is ever enough. America has the richest poor people in history, and yet it's a crisis that they aren't even richer.
I think if we were using taxpayer money for these education, there would also be more interest in making sure that the education requirements aren't filled with too much fluff that should be part of basic education or an option within basic education (we can, for example, have longer high school for college bound students than those going into a vocation).
Essentially you're arguing for a centrally planned economy, where bureaucrats decide and micromanage everything.
Somehow, it never seems to work out very well, and they have to build walls to keep people from escaping.
Nor are bureaucracies all bad if they actually rely on facts and less on special interests.
That's the theory. But it never works out that way, because bureaucrats are human beings and all human beings have special interests.
It's just the best we got. And I support a generally free market because I think overall even the losers are better under our capitalism than everyone would be under equal socialism. We just have to correct the flaws in capitalism, like fixing market failures and providing a saftey net for people.
I worked in call center many years ago with a dude that worked for Enron. He was just an employee in a cubicle farm. He left work one Friday with a job. Monday, he found a box with his personal effects from his desk where his cubicle had been. That's how he found out he lost his job.
He worked at the call center because the fact that he had Enron on his resume made folks hesitant to hire him, unfortunately.