Bank Bailout 2008

Bank Bailout Outline I. Introduction II. Background III. Opposition’s point 1, refute, 1st support for thesis. a. Credit Card Act of 2009 b. No Change at all, Banks still operating the same way IV. Opposition’s point 2, refute, 2nd support for thesis. a. Creation of TARP b. $12. 2 trillion dollars of tax dollars were spent wrong c. TARP allowed many banks to allow credit again d. A majority of banks have paid back TARP money e. After TARP, Economy boosted V. Opposition’s point 3, refute, 3rd support for thesis a. Toxic assets cannot be removed easily b. Government takes more cost, then expects c.Economy will decline with removal of assets VI. 4th support for thesis a. Increased national debt b. Politicians were forced to sign this bill c. No solving of problems â€Å"Let’s hope we are all wealthy and retired by this house of cards falters† (Bloomberg, 2007). The credit crisis is known as the â€Å"House of Cards†, for years the banking indust ry has transformed many American lives, which has resulted in a troublesome economy. Many factors led to the credit crisis, such as the rise and fall of the housing market, and inaccurate credit ratings helped to create the sub-prime mortgage crisis (Issues & Controversies, 2010).Low interest rates developed easy credit, in which people could get a mortgage and credit cards based on inaccurate credit ratings with the creation of sub-prime mortgages. People have the ability to own a home, with no down payment or fixed income. In August of 2007, the United States began a loss of confidence in securitized mortgages, which resulted in the Federal Reserve injecting $20 trillion dollars into the financial markets to ease the situation (â€Å"Obama Sends Warning to Big Banks, 2010).The most important question to be answered in the decade is â€Å"How a loss of $500 billion dollars from the sub-prime mortgage resulted in a $20 trillion dollar loss in equity values and an entire shock to t he world’s financial system† (Woellert & Kopecki, 2007). The United States government should not have given the financial institutions bailout money, because financial institutions using loop holes in the system to take advantage of their clients, financial institutions operations have stayed the same, and the government’s belief of a tree market economy goes against the bailout.The credit crisis is a â€Å"worldwide financial fiasco, which resulting from sub-prime mortgages, Collateralized Debit Obligations, Frozen credit markets, and credit default swaps† (Jarvis, 2009). The credit crisis brings two people together, people on Main Street and investors. The people on Main Street represent their mortgages or houses, while investors represent their money, which also represents big institutions such as pension funds, insurance companies, mutual funds; sovereign funds (Jarvis, 2009). These groups brought through the financial system, composed of banks and bro kers on Wall Street.As a result of the September 11th attack, Chairman Allen Greenspan lowered interest rates only to 1%, to allow credit to flow; however, investors have a very low return on investment (Snow, 2008). By lowering interest rates, it allows for banks to only borrow money from the Federal Government for 1% plus the surpluses from the Asian and Middle East market, which makes borrowing money easy for banks and to allow leverage (Adding up the Government’s Total Bailout Tab, 2009). The definition of leverage is, â€Å"borrowing money to amplify the outcome of a deal† and is a major way banks make their money (Princeton University, 2010).Wall Street takes out a majority of loans and uses leverage to their advantage, and a heavy flow of capital comes in. In which return, they pay back their original investment. The investors notice that Wall Street is making money very fast, and they want to create a new product to sell to Wall Street. The mortgage connects th e home buyer with a mortgage lender on Wall Street who gives them a mortgage, which is great because housing prices throughout America have been rising (â€Å"Bailed out banks†, 2010).The mortgage lender gets a call from an investment banker who wants to buy the mortgage; and the lender sells it to him, and the investment brokers buys thousands of mortgages. Every month the investment banker gets the payments from all the mortgages that he purchased from the box and cuts the box into three slices â€Å"Safe, Ok and Risky†, and then he packs the slices into the box and calls it a Collateralized debt obligation or â€Å"CDO† (Woellert & Kopecki, 2007).However, greed has risen to the investment banker and wants’ more mortgages; however, the lender does not have any more mortgages to sell, because everyone who has qualified for a mortgage already has one; and the birth of the sub-prime mortgage is born. With a standard loan, the homeowner had to prove his wor th of a home, such as a job, good standing citizen, and assets. However, with a subprime mortgage, it was basically like free money. The person did not have to state their income, nor prove that you had a job.The investment banker and the lender are taking a risk, because if a home owner defaults on their mortgage, the lender gets the house and sells the house for a profit because home values have been increasing (Issues & Controversies, 2010). While home values have been increasing, American incomes have been plummeting for years; and because of sub-prime mortgages, the person did not have to prove income, a person with a $30 thousand dollar income; could own a $300 thousand dollar home. Many people defaulted on their mortgages, and foreclosures have been on the rise. In the United States, foreclosures were up 81% in 2008 and up 225% from 206†, which equals out to 19 per 1,000 households (CBS News, 2008). Due to there was a huge increase in foreclosures, instead of housing pr ices increasing; the houses values decreased in value very quickly and resulted in more foreclosures. A $300 thousand dollar mortgages was now only worth $75 thousand dollars. So all the mortgages that was in the investment banker CDO, now are worthless, and no one wants’ to take the CDO, and now the CDO is acting like a bomb (Roney, 2007).The investment banker is now panicking because he borrowed millions of dollars to buy the mortgage, and now he cannot get rid of it; however he is not the only one. Thousands of investment bankers throughout the world have CDO’s on their hand (Bailed out banks, 2010). In result the world’s financial system has become frozen, and everyone starts going bankrupt. As a result of the failure, the United States government rolls out a new program called Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to prevent another bank failure.Under the bank bailout, creation of new legislation to protect the consumer has rapidly increased, and supporters of the bank bailout point to the Credit Card Act of 209. Not only were subprime mortgages affected, but due to the freeze in the credit market in the United States government needed a way to regulate the credit card industry, but also to stimulate spending. Under the Credit Card Act of 2009, they require the financial institutions to give the cardholders 45 day’s notice of any interest rate change and financial institutions are prohibited from using misleading terms such as â€Å"prime or fixed rate† (The White House, 2009).With this legislation in place, it protects the consumer from many of the scams that the mortgage industry used as bait to get clients into buying houses they could not afford, using the subprime mortgages (Roney, 2007). But also it allows for Congress to embrace new regulations placed on the financial institutions. The Credit Card Act of 2009 that has become part of the famous bank bailout, however, it has been shown to protect the consumer, and Co ngress will regulate the new rules placed on financial institutions.For example, â€Å"there is no cap on the interest rate the credit card companies can charge†, and while credit card companies cannot increase you interest rate but only if you are late on a payment, â€Å"However future purchases interest rates can be raised with no reason† (White, 2010). The credit card companies have the ability to raise the interest rate on any purchases, while they must still notify you of the higher interest rate, the ballooning of the interest rate can take place at any time.This is exactly the same measures the financial institutions have used to misinform their consumers and â€Å"kick them when they are down† and â€Å"corrupt the middle class of America† (White, 2010). How the subprime mortgage boomed, had to come from the terms that many of the average consumers cannot understand, and a major aftermath of the subprime/credit crisis, occurred when many people d efaulted on their homes and credit cards (Roney, 2007).Then the mortgage and home will not exist for the family any more, and the credit card companies will balloon their interest rate enough so that the card holders will not be able to pay their credit card/mortgage. In which then the financial institution hounds them and attacks them at their core roots and even calls other family members to alert them of the card holder financial problems because they cannot pay their bills. The banking and financial institution have not taken any actions to prevent another credit crisis from happening again.Supporters of the bank bailout, commonly referred to as TARP, argue that the bailout wiped all the bad toxic assets (CDO’s) which were collected as result of the credit crisis and prevented the assets from hurting the financial institutions. The major recipients were Freddie Mac; and Fannie Mae. Both were government owned enterprises which bought a majority of the sub-prime mortgages ( Roney, 2007). Removing the bad assets from the financial institutions will have a positive effect on the economy because it allows banks to start lending again and unfreeze the markets.Under TARP, some mortgages would require the government to rewrite some of the effected loans, effectively putting more Americans into homes that they will be able to afford and by rewriting the loans also increase the standard of living. John Douglas, general counsel at the FDIC, said, â€Å"It doesn’t make sense to give the authority to anybody else but the FDIC†; he goes on to say â€Å"That’s what the FDIC does, it takes the bad assets out of the banks and manages them and sells them† (Vekshin & Schmidt, 2009). However, the supporters of the bank bailout do not represent correct/valid points/facts.In a study by the IMF of the 124 banking crisis, they have concluded: Existing empirical research has shown that providing assistance to banks and their borrowers can be count erproductive, resulting in increased losses to banks, which often abuse forbearance to take unproductive risks at government expense. The typical result of forbearance is a deeper hole in the net worth of banks, crippling tax burdens to finance bank bailouts, and even more severe credit supply contraction and economic decline than would have occurred in the absence of forbearance. Valencia & Laeven, 2008) As a result of the IMF study, it has concluded that removing the bad toxic assets from the banks could actually hurt the financial institutions and a system as a whole could freeze the credit markets again with a result of an economic decline, instead of an economic incline. Also there is no definition of a troubled market or loan. If the government wants to rewrite troubled mortgages or loans, there are no set criteria to say whether a mortgage or loan should be taken by the government and given to the troubled family.Another point, as Steward said, â€Å"The only way for this pr ogram to work is for enough of the bad mortgages/loans to be purchased to connivance lenders that the problem mortgages cannot hurt the system, or to put in simple terms, the government has to purchase enough mortgages/loans to inspire intra- institution (Stewart, 2008) Furthermore, the institutions will sell the assets that will remain depressed in value; and â€Å"no one is going to sell a asset that has a higher chance of making the institution money (Obama Sends Warning to Big Banks, 2010). In result, under TARP the government has a high probability of taking a majority of the loss.With the bank bailout, the economy will decline, and the government will take a great loss of the bank bailout. Supporters of the bank bailout will say that if the government did not step in and inject $20 trillion dollars into the market, an economic collapse could have happened and set America into another Great Depression. A heavy incline of unemployment; foreclosures were through the roof, a majo r decline in incomes (Solomon, Enrich, & Hilsenrath, 2009). America was becoming a very sick nation, and the bank bailout would help the economy and stimulate the financial institutions to help start lending and unfreeze the credit market.As one writer wrote, â€Å"there was at no time better to inject the financial institutions at this time, if they collapse it may be the sign of the apocalypse† (Bailed out banks, 2010)/ If there was no bank bailout, there is a major chance that this will be a sign of the apocalypse because the United States drives the world and if the major financial institutions such as Bank of America or Merrill Lynch fails then the world economy could ultimately send the world in to another Great Depression.The major reason that the American government should not have passed the bank bailout was the cost to the government. Under the Bush administration, the national debit doubled to a record high $10 trillion dollars (Solomon, Enrich, & Hilsenrath, 2009) . There are more programs that the government has to pay for such as Social Security. Many economists call this the â€Å"polluter pays† which is defined as â€Å"polluters must pay for the cost of cleaning it up† (Princeton University, 2010).When the financial industry is bailed out of disasters, which a majority of the time throughout history, they have created those disasters. If the banking industry feels like they can be bailed out every time they make a major mistake, then the American people will pay because the bank bailout is directly connected to the taxpayer’s funds (Obama sends warning to Big Banks, 2010).A price tag of $700 billion dollar bailout has hidden costs which can go high as $3 trillion dollars, which can â€Å"be the shortfall between the economies potential output and its actual output from the crisis† (Issues & Controversies, 2010). Another factor in the bank bailout is the morality, because the banks do not pay the costs that are imposed on a world society, which the tax payers pay directly into the banks and then the banks pay back into the government. Also, the political had a major role in deciding to pass the bank bailout.A senator said, â€Å"We had no choice. We had a gun pointed at our heads. Without the bailout, things would have been even worse† (Woellert & Kopecki, 2007). While politicians did not have an actual gun to their head, figuratively speaking because they had a oversight on â€Å"saving the banks and shareholders† or â€Å"have saved the banks but let the bankers and shareholders go† because of the final tap that American tax payer will have to pay to the bailout the banks that created this mess (Solomon, Enrich, & Hilsenrath, 2009).The bank bailout was a major mistake in the evolution of the financial world because it did not solve any problems; people can still be charged higher interest rates on their credit cards/mortgages. With TARP, there is no true removal of the bad assets that caused the credit crisis to form the bank bailouts; it only hurts the government because it has to take on the debt. Truly, we have stroke the core of the American people with the credit crisis, but at the same time the financial world has been given more powers and in a free market enterprise, the credit crisis can happen again at any moment.