Resetting the Baseline of Ownership: Takings and Investor Expectations after the Bailouts (original) (raw)

LEGAL STUDIES RESEARCH PAPER SERIES Property in Crisis

Property law generally develops gradually, with doctrine slowly accreting in the interstices of daily conflict and the larger culture of property likewise emerging at a glacial pace. In times of crisis, however, fundamental questions about the nature of ownership and the balance between the individual and the state instantiated in the structure of property rise rapidly to the surface. Our current economic crisis-the deepest since the Great Depression-is no exception.

Competition and Crisis in Mortgage Securitization

U.S. policymakers often treat market competition as a panacea. However, in the case of mortgage securitization, policymakers’ faith in competition is misplaced. Competitive mortgage securitization has been tried three times in U.S. history - during the 1880s, the 1920s, and the 2000s - and every time it has failed. Most recently, competition between mortgage securitizers led to a race to the bottom on mortgage underwriting standards that ended in the late 2000s financial crisis. This article provides original evidence that when competition was less intense and securitizers had more market power, securitizers acted to monitor mortgage originators and to maintain prudent underwriting. However, securitizers’ ability to monitor originators and maintain high standards was undermined as competition shifted market power away from securitizers and toward originators. Although standards declined across the market, the largest and most powerful of the mortgage securitizers, the Government Sponsored Enterprises (“GSEs”), remained more successful than other mortgage securitizers at maintaining prudent underwriting. This article proposes reforms based on lessons from the recent financial crisis: merge the GSEs with various government agencies’ mortgage operations to create a single dedicated mortgage securitization agency that would seek to maintain market stability, improve underwriting, and provide a long term investment return for the benefit of taxpayers.

Government Role During the Global Financial Crisis

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000

In this study we investigated government hand in the Global Financial Crisis. Before, during and after crisis government attempted to solve and avoid the turmoil. But did he succeed? Beginning with low interest rates set by FED, US government political pressures to enable more Americans to buy homes, unrestrained financial system despite of regulations and fines, human greedy were the main reasons for Great Recession. More than 30 years of deregulation and reliance on self-regulation by financial institutions was the one big reason for crisis. Besides showing the stages crisis passed, the paper also examines penalties government gave to the financial intermediaries for breaking law in past related to crisis. Showing the emerging process of crisis, the article mainly restricted on US economy -where was the epicenter of problem -and government, while the U.S. financial system stumbles, it may take the rest of the world down with it. The actuality of the topic is that it was also a social crisis because, unemployment in US had reached to 50 millions which means they also lost their social insurances, and 16 million families had lost their homes. Several corporations bankrupted, in spite of more than these were saved by government. While financial crisis turned into social and economic turmoil it became government prior issue to solve.

Systemic Risk Through Securitization: The Result of Deregulation and Regulatory Failure

Conn. L. Rev., 2008

During the recent housing boom, private-label securitization without regulation was unsustainable. Without regulation, securitization allowed mortgage industry actors to gain fees and to put off risks. The ability to pass off risk allowed lenders and securitizers to compete for market share by lowering their lending standards, which activated more borrowing. Lenders who did not join in the easing of lending standards were crowded out of the market.

Chapter 2: The Financial Crisis

2009

The financial turmoil that originated in 2007 and developed into an unprecedented crisis battering financial and real markets is the latest manifestation, on a grand scale and with new attributes, of a welldefined pathology in the process of market liberalization and integration in the post-Bretton Woods era. At the root of the crisis lies a fundamental inconsistency between financial globalisation