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Market Crash In 2008 Essay

590 Words3 Pages

In the times leading up to the financial crisis the roles of the Credit Rating Agencies (CRA) changed drastically. This is believed to be one of the key factors that actually made the market crash in 2007. Subprime mortgages were being handed out more and more. Subprime mortgages are given out to people that cannot get approved for a regular loan from the bank due to an insufficient credit score. When one gets a subprime mortgage, it comes with a much higher risk rate. The Collateralized Debt Obligation and Asset-backed Security created a “housing bubble” with subprime mortgages and this allowed for investment companies to bundle multiple subprime mortgages into one deal to give to investors (Selig 2009: 5). This market was thriving at the …show more content…

However, the housing bubble didn’t last because in 2006 the prices of houses halted and the interest rate increased. This made investors sell back their subprime mortgages and investment banks were stuck with all of the debt. Credit Rating Agencies are supposed to give people a credit rating based on how much debt they have and how they use their credit (Selig 2009: 7). During the crisis, these agencies shifted their area of work and gave the subprime mortgage bundles credit rating in order to secure them. These companies didn’t take into account how much risk they were creating for themselves because they were giving better credit ratings to people who actually had poor credit. These companies began to collapse due to this though (Selig 2009: 8). They began to work with investment banks and this started to leave the banks responsible if the credit rating was given incorrectly to somebody. These companies started going out of business do to the fact that they didn’t assess the proper ratings and all the roles were shifting and the CRAs were more concerned on market stocks and not having integrity and wanting to actually help

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