Like all previous cycles of booms and busts, the seeds of the subprime meltdown were sown during unusual times. As the global financial crisis (GFC) of 2008 erupted, the worst recession since the 1930s elicited unprecedented action from nations and their central banks. However, through the chaos, Canada appeared to have weathered the storm unscathed. In his work, Canada’s Housing Bubble Story: Mortgage Securitization, the State, and the Global Financial Crisis, Alan Walks describes Canada’s experiences during and after the financial crisis. To do so, Walks outlines four broad objectives: cross-examine Canadian policy history, challenge Canadian exceptionalism propagated by mainstream media, evaluate the policies pursued by the Canadian government, and finally deduce the implications on Canada’s mortgage market and rising household debt.…
Abortion laws will always be seen as a controversial subject. In Freakonomics, Steven D. Levitt and John Donahue discuss the correlation between crime rate and abortion laws. They dismiss other factors such as gun control, proactive policing and increased incarceration rates and instead focus on the theory that Roe v. Wade played a greater role in crime rate fall. In 1973 Roe v. Wade ruled anti abortion laws unconstitutional.…
ECON 312 Midterm Exam Solutions http://uphomework.com/downloads/econ-312-midterm-exam-solutions/ Midterm Exam #1 1) The effect of a (ceteris paribus) decrease in the cost of home production will be to 2) An increase in transport costs that has no effect on production costs (home or factory) will 3) A decrease in factory production costs (ceteris paribus) will 4) The building of the Canadian Pacific Railroad (which connected Toronto to the West) would have 5) According to Jared Diamond’s “Guns, Germs, and Steel” hypothesis, which of the following contributed to the dominant world position of European civilization by the mid-1800s?…
The environmentalist Bill McKibben in his book “Deep Economy” he addresses some of the major issues we have as a society and mentions some of the ways we could reach a more sustainable nation. According to him we suffer from three major crisis. The first problem, he thinks we need to deal with is politics, now days we are focusing more in the economy and forgetting about the impact it is creating in our natural environment. The second problem is growth, which refers to the idea that we have about money making us happier. The last problem and the one he stresses the most is physics and chemistry; this refers to the problem with have with fossil fuel, which is one of the biggest cause of climate change.…
I have read, not skimmed 100% of the Wheelan book. From reading “Naked Economics,” I was able to better understand various concepts in economics and how they apply to the world today. In particular, I learned about tax policy, price discrimination, productivity, and globalization which has allowed me to better understand how economic policies affect my life and the world around me. I thought it was interesting when Wheelan mentioned that the best public policies economically are those that incentivise good habits like hard work or reducing pollution but don’t punish good tendencies at the same time.…
Individuals & Maximizing Utility “Everyone else in the world has preferences, which may or may not have anything common with me.” This quote comes from Charles Wheelan’s novel Naked Economics, in which he explains the idea of economics to those without prior knowledge on the subject. The given quote is Wheelan sharing that we all have demands and desires, which are the fundamental parts of the market economy. Society is constantly trying to find ways to advance themselves in their goals and expectations in life. In the book, Oseola McCarty and Wesley Autrey were South American villagers that Wheelan used to explain the idea of people’s preferences and utility.…
The author’s position regarding the role of US monetary policy and the housing market bubble during the early 2000’s is that they don’t “believe that the monetary policies of the period played a large role” (Dokko et al., 2009, p. 3). Therefore, in their view, the three causes that contributed to the housing bubble were low mortgage interest rates, low short-term interest rates, and relaxed mortgage lending standards. One crucial cause of the housing bubble was the widespread belief that home prices would continue to rise. Therefore, allowing borrowers to get low mortgage interest rates. The belief was if “borrowers continued to accumulate housing equity and lenders and investors were profitable, mortgage credit was readily available and this…
“Japan has crafted a more diversified financial system that has retained some of the features of a non-liberal system, adopted some features of an Anglo-American system, and also created some new practices that are distinct from any of the pre-existing systems” (Kushida and Shimizu 2). Over the last two decades, Japan’s financial market has become much more diversified and open. This is mainly due to new technology and increased interaction with other markets. In the journal we read how the ‘new’ Japanese financial system is “best represented by foreign investment banks, securities firms, insurers and some new Japanese entrants” (para. 6). The Hybrid system, in turn, is represented by “the three major financial groups, Mizuho, Mitsubishi UFJ and Mitsui Sumitomo, centered around their respective mega-banks” (para. 7) while the old system can be represented by “regional banks, which overwhelmingly retain traditional strategies (continued heavy reliance on retail banking), organizational structures (main bank relationships, seniority-based hierarchies) and norms (regionally based with close ties to local governments and an emphasis on relationship banking as a key source of client information)”…
Learning about personal finance and economics is crucial for anybody to learn in order to make good financial decisions both right now and in the future. After taking economics, I have chosen the five most decidedly important topics that we have studied throughout the semester, which include: Budgeting, different types of insurance plans, how to have and manage good credit, how to write a resume, and finally how to pay taxes. Each of these topics relate to each other in someway and without knowing how to budget correctly, for example, you wouldn't be able to have good credit. Also, each of these topics is important and relevant for a specific reason pertaining to the fact that they will help me manage my financial decisions from here on out.…
The firms created these horrible mortgages and began selling them and sellers like banks, formed bundles and sold them off without informing their customers of the risks they are taking. Firms and originators resulted in making the market of mortgage industry unsafe for customers to purchase. Banks and firms worked closely together to situate a price in the market for the mortgage back securities. Plentiful actors play crucial roles in the mortgage securitization market, but the key players who create and sell these securities originators, issuers, and…
Bus 2203, Principals of Finance1 Unit 2, Written Assignment “Monetary Policy and the Housing Bubble” What role did the setting of monetary policy play in housing market developments? The central theme of this paper is to evaluate the role and relationship between monetary policy with a specific focus on the housing market developments. It is an estimation that monetary and/or economic conditions of a country will affect mortgage borrowing as well as prices of homes. The direct correlation between the monetary policy and the housing market is being reviewed with a much more critical eye than pre-housing bubble days.…
The subprime mortgage crisis of 2008 continues to be a hot topic today because it still impacts the lives of people today. Consequently, there are many theories explaining why this crisis happened, who were key players, and who were negatively impacted. It is clear that subprime mortgages existed because it provided attractive returns however, these attractive returns came with extremely high risks that eventually did not work out in both the lenders and borrowers favor. According to Pajarska and Jociene (2014) the subprime mortgage crisis was caused by the credit boom and the housing market bubble.…
The 2008 financial crisis has been described as the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Most economists agree that the crisis began in 2006, when housing prices began to decline, leading to the collapse of the subprime mortgage market in 2008. The subprime mortgage market had been in place since the 1990s, and lacked regulation. The lack of regulation due to corruption among mortgage securitization companies in the 1990s ultimately led the collapse of the economy 2 decades later. The financial crisis resulted in the US government engaging in a series of policies with the purpose of getting the economy back on track.…
It is the way to the small regional bank to lend the mortgage to the customers without having the tension that whether the borrower will be able to repay the loan or not. There is a role of bank to act as an intermediary between the investment markets and the homebuyer. This type of security is used to give the principal payments and interest from the pool of mortgage to the shareholders. These types of securities are issues and guaranteed by Federal National Mortgage Association (FNMA), Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac), Government National Mortgage Association (GNMA), etc. (http://www.sec.gov, 2014).…
An overhaul in the money market industry followed by an increase in Libor rates has evoked shades of the 2008 global financial crisis. But today’s jump is not a signal of credit stress in the financial sector, rather a changing regulatory environment. The new regulations imposed by the SEC have subsequently put pressure on prime money market funds and financial insitutions but also individual borrowers with floating rate debt. That said, the situation brewing in the markets is a sign of greater future investment opportunities as opposed to upcoming…