下面是我之前做的一个Case的结论,拿出来和大家分享讨论
About Housing Bubble
A graph showing the median and average sales prices of new homes sold in the United States between 1963 and 2008 (not adjusted for inflation)
Between 1997 and 2006, the price of the typical American house increased by 124%.During the two decades ending in 2001, the national median home price ranged from 2.9 to 3.1 times median household income. This ratio rose to 4.0 in 2004 and 4.6 in 2006. This housing bubble resulted in quite a few homeowners refinancing their homes at lower interest rates, or financing consumer spending by taking out second mortgages secured by the price appreciation.
In a Peabody Award winning program, NPR correspondents argued that a "Giant Pool of Money" (represented by $70 trillion in worldwide fixed income investments) sought higher yields than those offered by U.S. Treasury bonds early in the decade. Further, this pool of money had roughly doubled in size from 2000 to 2007, yet the supply of relatively safe, income generating investments had not grown as fast. Investment banks on Wall Street answered this demand with the MBS and CDO, which were assigned safe ratings by thecredit rating agencies. In effect, Wall Street connected this pool of money to the mortgage market in the U.S., with enormous fees accruing to those throughout the mortgage supply chain, from the mortgage broker selling the loans, to small banks that funded the brokers, to the giant investment banks behind them. By approximately 2003, the supply of mortgages originated at traditional lending standards had been exhausted. However, continued strong demand for MBS and CDO began to drive down lending standards, as long as mortgages could still be sold along the supply chain. Eventually, this speculative bubble proved unsustainable.
The CDO in particular enabled financial institutions to obtain investor funds to finance subprime and other lending, extending or increasing the housing bubble and generating large fees. A CDO essentially places cash payments from multiple mortgages or other debt obligations into a single pool, from which the cash is allocated to specific securities in a priority sequence. Those securities obtaining cash first received investment-grade ratings from rating agencies. Lower priority securities received cash thereafter, with lower credit ratings but theoretically a higher rate of return on the amount invested.
By September 2008, average U.S. housing prices had declined by over 20% from their mid-2006 peak. As prices declined, borrowers with adjustable-rate mortgages could not refinance to avoid the higher payments associated with rising interest rates and began to default. During 2007, lenders began foreclosure proceedings on nearly 1.3 million properties, a 79% increase over 2006. This increased to 2.3 million in 2008, an 81% increase vs. 2007. By August 2008, 9.2% of all U.S. mortgages outstanding were either delinquent or in foreclosure.By September 2009, this had risen to 14.4%.
About regulation and deregulation
The Importance of Minimum Capital Requirements
Like any other company a bank needs an adequate level of capital to support its activities and prosper. However, banks’ capital resources are particularly important because the closure of a bank can cause considerable consequential damage beyond its owners, employees and creditors due to its role in the payments system and as a provider of financing to business and consumers. This establishes the case for minimum regulatory capital requirements which have a number of benefits. First, they provide a degree of cost internalization, limiting the negative externalities inherent in bank failure. Second, by ensuring a minimum level of positive net worth, they can discourage excessive risk-taking, especially the so-called “gamble for resurrection”, as owners have a larger investment at stake and hence have more to lose. Furthermore, capital buffers over and above the regulatory minima can allow a bank to continue as a going concern after having experienced unexpected losses, contributing to overall financial stability.