Chapter 203 Financial Crisis

[8 Years Later]

September 15, 2008

" The share is down 1.7 per cent here with a loss of 37 points or so. Apple's shares were just getting hammered this morning."

" We are down by between three and four and a half per cent generally across these markets."

" Let's talk about the speed with which we are watching this market deteriorate; we are red everywhere, essentially down by four or five per cent."

" God, we are down over 16 per cent; DOW at the same time has fallen about 18 per cent."

" The stock market is now down 21 per cent."

" We are not down 43 per cent."

" What in the world is happening on wall street. Two-year treasury yield went from 190 to 166 in the blink of the eye."

" It was the worst day on wall street since the crash of 1987. Nasdaq, everything and more have been completely wiped out. You are seeing a broad base decline over all of the technology sectors."

" Traders here working the phone say a lot of their customers are freaked out waiting to see how low the DOW will go; they are not so focused on OPEC, yes it did cut production by one and half million barrels per day."

" We've had an eight-day losing streak in the DOW that in percentage puts in on par close to the loss suffered in that crash in 1987, close to that percentage loss those two days in 1929."

" What started in America recently had spread to every part of the world."

" We are down nine per cent today in the market in frankfurt, the Paris market down by eight per cent. Austria suspended earlier in the day, is down by nearly eleven per cent."

A great war was happening both inside and outside Wall street, and reporters were going crazy watching the free-falling market. They had never seen anything like this before.

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The financial crisis of 2008 was years in the making. By the summer of 2007, financial markets worldwide showed signs that the reckoning was overdue for a years-long binge on cheap credit. It was evident with the collapse of two Bear Stearns hedge funds.

Few analysts were warning investors that they might be unable to withdraw money from three of its funds. Yet despite the warning signs, few investors suspected that the worst crisis in nearly eight decades was about to engulf the global financial system, bringing Wall Street's giants to their knees and triggering the Great Recession.

It was an epic financial and economic collapse that cost many ordinary people their jobs, life savings, homes, or all three.

The 2008 financial crisis began with lousy credit and lax lending standards that fueled a housing bubble. When the bubble burst, the banks were left holding trillions of dollars of worthless investments in subprime mortgages.

The seeds of the financial crisis were planted during years of rock-bottom interest rates and lax lending standards that fueled a housing price bubble in the U.S. and elsewhere.

It began, as usual, with good intentions. Faced with the bursting of the dot-com bubble, a series of corporate accounting scandals, and the September 11 terrorist attacks, the Federal Reserve lowered the federal funds rate from 6.5% in May 2000 to 1% in June 2003.

The aim was to boost the economy by making money available to businesses and consumers at bargain rates. The result was an upward spiral in home prices as borrowers took advantage of the low mortgage rates. Even subprime borrowers with poor or no credit history could realize the dream of buying a home.

The banks then sold those loans on to Wall Street banks, which packaged them into what was billed as low-risk financial instruments such as mortgage-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations. Soon a big secondary market for originating and distributing subprime loans developed.

Moreover, the SEC started to free their grip on big financial giants, which allowed them to leverage its position up to fifty times.

Eventually, interest rates rose, and homeownership reached a saturation point. The Fed began raising rates in June 2004, and two years later, the Federal funds rate had gained 5.25%, which remained until August 2007.

This caused real hardship to many Americans. Their homes were worth less than they paid for them. They needed to owe money to their lenders to sell their houses.

If they had adjustable-rate mortgages, their costs went up as their homes' values went down. The most vulnerable subprime borrowers were stuck with mortgages they couldn't afford in the first place.

Leading Subprime mortgage companies made nearly $60 billion in loans in 2006, as reported in their annual report. In 2007, it filed for bankruptcy protection.

As 2007 got underway, one subprime lender after another filed for bankruptcy. During February and March, more than 25 subprime lenders went under. In April, New Century Financial, which specialized in sub-prime lending, filed for bankruptcy and laid off half its workforce.

For the past 5 years, Samuel had been preparing for it. He thought deeply about warning the public, but who would believe a kid? He also knew people would ask how he could see the future, creating new problems for him.

He did, in fact, get his family and friends on board with the idea. After a long meeting with his father, Robert believed in his son's warning. Samuel had never been wrong before; if he was this insistent about it, there was not much loss following his plan.

Morgan and Hanson's family also accepted his advice and stayed away from the speculative market; they had seen his meteoritic rise during the dot com bubble and always considered him a financial genius.

It didn't mean they left empty-handed; before 2007, they had already left the market with huge profits. Although the bull run was still going on, they didn't feel too bad about it.

But the firm had to endure some hardships, and many investors left after seeing their profit margin decline. These greedy types saw other institutes racking in more money and felt like it was time to jump ships.

Samuel was not very worried about it; at the end of the year, they would realize how big of a mistake they had made. The firm also blacklisted these people from ever coming back; following Samuel's advice, they hedged the market significantly when everyone was bullish about it.

It was one of that crazy moves of their boss, but after working under him for so long, they were completely confident with their decision. God could be wrong, but their boss, the prodigal little giant, would never make a losing bet!