FISCAL FALLOUT: How Did We Get Here?

Over the past week, the landscape of American Finance has been changed forever.  We’ve all been reading about the impending recession and the failures of major financial institutions, but many of us here in the Hip-Hop nation still do not have a full understanding of how we got to this point.    With our Government finally reaching an agreement on a plan to use more than 700 Billion of our tax dollars to get Wall Street out of this mess, it’s important that the Hip-Hop Nation be ahead of the curve in understanding exactly what they’re doing with our money. Before we talk about getting out the current crisis we should be on the same page in understanding how we got here.  Let’s go behind the numbers and discuss the financial principles that set the stage for all of this.   For decades, as Americans, we’ve been told that the key to building wealth and financial security is home ownership.  Historically, purchasing a home provides better returns, over the long haul, than any other investment one can make – better than a 401k, better than any savings, better than any stock.  Additionally, there’s the added security that in times of need, you can borrow against appreciation of the home’s value.  After years of prosperity during the Clinton administration – from the late 1990’s through the early part of this decade, more Americans began getting their piece of the American Dream by purchasing homes.  Cities like Atlanta, North Carolina and New York saw their property values double and sometimes triple in less than a decade.  Banks and Mortgage companies all profited from lending money.  Home values steadily increased and it was seemingly a win for everyone involved.   When you purchase a home, normally, you take out a long term loan with a bank or mortgage lender.  That loan creates a steady source of income – through your monthly payments – for the lender.  With so many houses being bought, the lenders began selling those loans – for cash to give out more loans – to Investment Banks.    For example, you get a 30 year Home Loan from HSBC.  Bear Sterns, an Investment Bank, might go to HSBC, Washington Mutual, and Bank of America and purchase your loan, and loans just like it, at a discount.  HSBC and the other banks get the cash, which they can use to give out more loans or invest in other markets.    Bear Sterns would then take all the loans they purchased and package them into what’s called a Collateralized Debt Obligation – or a CDO.  What they are essentially doing is creating a single asset out of  many loans just like yours.  This is Securitization.   Bear Sterns can then sell all of those loans, as one item, to another investment bank or Hedge Fund.  Again, the seller gets the cash to do other stuff with, and the buyer gets your monthly payment – for 30 years.   The problem with securitization is that it eliminates responsibility.  If I’m HSBC, and you come to me for a loan – and I know I’m going to sell your loan to an investment bank – I’m not going to take all the necessary steps to insure that you will be able to pay your loan.  Good Credit, Bad Credit, No Credit? – No problem. None of that matters because HSBC is not going to be on the hook if you default on your loan.   And that’s exactly what happened.  For the first time in years, home prices stopped rising and in some parts of the country, they actually began to fall.  At the same time, people began to default on the loans they’d taken out.  Some of these were no money down loans with adjustable interest rates that rose after the first couple of years (known as ARMS). Some of the loans were given with only stated, not verified sources of income.  As these loans began to default, the value of the CDO’s discussed above began to decrease dramatically.    Remember the thousands of loans just like yours that Bear Sterns bought and packaged – imagine if 10% of the people who are paying those loans ended up going into foreclosure.  That CDO loses millions of dollars in value.  Investment Banks and Hedge funds were buying, literally billions of dollars of these types of investments, and often, they were borrowing money to do so.     When the number of people defaulting started to increase, and homeowners could no longer borrow against their equity, or sell their homes for a profit, those investments lost value and the billions of dollars in subsequent losses led to the disaster we’re in now.