Subprime crisis : the overall picture

In many aspects, the current financial meltdown that brought many banks and insurers to insolvency may be compared to the nuclear meltdown that affected the Chernobyl power plant. And whatever Big Government pundits may tell us endlessly - without real in-depth arguments - inappropriate state intrusions in the economy are as much responsible for the financial crisis as poor state management of nuclear facilities by USSR was for the Chernobyl disaster. If the mechanisms of the so-called “Chinese syndrome” can be described as a process of ignition, amplification, and then propagation of atomic reactions, likewise, the current crisis is a story of state interventions in the economy, that ignited, amplified, and then propagated the meltdown from its original core to the whole financial system. Ignition The main factor that ignited the current crisis is how politicians forced two state regulated enterprises, Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac , to refinance a growing part of unsecured loans to low and very low income families. In exchange, Fannie and Freddie were exempted from some accounting requirements generally expected from ordinary firms, allowing them to leverage too much credit compared to their equity, by an extensive use of off balance “special purpose vehicles.” All these operations were made under an implicit taxpayer provided safety net, as the statutory rules of the department of Housing and Urban Development made possible the nationalization of Fannie and Freddie in the case of bankruptcy. These government provisions, coupled with a law mandating banks to find ways to originate loans to some high risk-profiled borrowers (the much discussed and controversial Community Reinvestment Act), reversed the usual prudential rules governing company CEOs: first, don’t fail, and then, make a profit. Due to their government backing, Fannie and Freddie only had to expand their volume of business, without too much consideration of the underlying risks. The purchase of so many bad loans by two state-backed giants encouraged reckless lending by banks and mortgage brokers to many risk-unaware families. This behavior was greatly helped by Alan Greenspan’s decisions to lower and maintain very low interest rates in the early 2000s without consideration of the obvious asset bubble that was emerging in the housing sector. When credit is too cheap, borrowers tend to be less careful in their investments. Amplification But these facts do not explain by themselves how big the housing bubble has become. The average Joe, in the mortgage broker’s office, was not as unsophisticated as generally described. He could lose his common sense and succumb to easy credit only because the brokers could show him impressive Case-Schiller index curves, which seemed to show that any housing investment could gain more and more value every year, making the purchaser richer even while he was sleeping. Without this apparent housing inflation, many people wouldn’t have jumped so recklessly onto the easy credit bandwagon. But this housing inflation did not occur everywhere in the country. Some of the most dynamic metro areas, in terms of population growth, haven’t experienced any housing bubble. Recent Nobel Prize Paul Krugman, supported by several res...

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