Special Report: How the Government is Setting Us Up for a Second Subprime Crisis
by ilene - September 23rd, 2009 1:44 pm
How the Government is Setting Us Up for a Second Subprime Crisis
By Shah Gilani
Contributing Writer
Money Morning
Is the government creating another subprime-mortgage bubble?
The first time around, the three-headed federal serpent – the Bush administration, the Treasury Department and the U.S. Federal Reserve – used Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM) and Freddie Mac (NYSE: FRE) to "legitimize" trillions of dollars worth of toxic financial waste known as subprime mortgages.
The result was the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression – a mess that was global in nature.
And we’re now headed for a repeat performance.
Some of the players may have changed since the first subprime-mortgage crisis, but the game apparently remains the same. With banks currently unwilling to lend, the new federal triumvirate of the Obama administration, the Treasury and the Fed are trying to inflate the moribund U.S. housing market. This time around, however, the FHA is the weapon of choice.
Obama & Co. are making an all-or-nothing bet that the U.S. economy will recover and bail out the housing market before the final bill for this ill-advised gambit comes due.
When this bubble bursts – and it will – U.S. taxpayers will be on the hook for more than $1 trillion in government-guaranteed debt.
Ginnie Mae: Fannie and Freddie’s Once-Quiet Cousin
As a direct result of the real-estate meltdown, U.S. banks have become reluctant lenders. And they’ve raised their loan standards considerably. Federal officials knew they had to keep the mortgage spigot open, especially to suspect borrowers, so they turned to their new "secret weapon" – the FHA.
The FHA has been cranking out new government-insured subprime loans, which it packages into government guaranteed securities for sale to banks. This frightening reflation of the subprime bubble is being engineered for two key reasons:
- To put a floor under falling house prices.
- And to let banks swap toxic Fannie and Freddie securities for new toxic debt that is 100% guaranteed by U.S. taxpayers.
The almost inevitable insolvency of the FHA could rapidly undermine the fragile recovery of the U.S. economy. And it could plunge stock prices and bank viability to new lows.
Why the FHA? That’s simple. In an era of increasingly stringent lending standards, the FHA’s standards are laughably lax.
Created by the National Housing Act of 1934, the FHA insures private mortgage…
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WSJ Video: The End of Wall Street
by ilene - July 24th, 2009 1:11 am
WSJ Video: The End of Wall Street – Part One
Courtesy of Edward Harrison at Credit Writedown
Here’s a credit-crisis video retrospective from the Wall Street Journal. It is chapter one of a three part series. Notice the Wall Street meme that subprime borrowers caused the crisis which is patently false. It’s all about dodgy credits and Fannie and Freddie? Total rubbish.
But, of course, if you say it enough, people might believe you. Read this post "Ten Myths about the Subprime Crisis" on Economist’s View to see the real story.
Easy money, as the clip says, is the culprit. And this money went into credit cards, leveraged buy outs, residential housing, student loans, commercial property and on down the line. It’s not about subprime, my friends I like the rest of it, but remember the Wall Street Journal has a certain bias and it is reflected here.
Chapter One: In the first of this three-part series, WSJ reporters explain how the housing bubble inflated and burst, and why easy money led to the collapse of Wall Street’s biggest financial institutions.
WSJ Video: The End of Wall Street – Part Two
This is part two of the End of Wall Street series the Wall Street Journal is producing.
Chapter Two of A WSJ series: What was going through the minds of CEOs, corporate boards, fund managers and mortgage lenders as they created hard-to-understand derivatives Warren Buffett once called "weapons of financial mass destruction."
You have to love how it starts off with Alan Murray saying “There’s plenty of blame to go around. I think in retrospect lots of people who were doing stupid things.” Then the famous NYSE opening bell goes off and they cut to a shot of Alan Greenspan.
I couldn’t help but think about Tim Iacono’s site when I saw this. Watch this video. They really takeoff the gloves here. Regulators and the rating agencies get a severe beat-down. Well-done.
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW. She manages the site