Key Messages
Understanding The Real Villain Behind The 2008 Great Recession: What House Of Debt Teaches Us
In House of Debt, it is clear that massive consumer debt was the real villain behind the Great Recession.
The book explains why this factor played such a large role in the downturn, and what we can do to prevent another recession from occurring again in the future.
The book emphasizes how higher credit scores damaged individuals and pushed them towards defaulting on their loans, how abolishing the gold standard temporarily freed people from their debt, and how nothing in the dot-com bubble could compare to the destructive effects of the Great Recession.
Ultimately, House of Debt captures why massive consumer debt can lead to devastating economic situations, like those experienced during the Great Recession.
High Household Debt Is The Real Cause Of Severe Recessions
It’s a well-established fact that severe recessions are caused by a huge build-up of consumer debt and a subsequent drop in household spending.
This was made abundantly clear during the Great Recession, when US household debt jumped to $14 trillion, and the ratio of debt owed to income earned heightened to an unprecedented level of 2.1.
Similarly, during the Great Depression, both the ratio of consumer debt to income rose significantly while urban mortgage debts tripled.
Studies have highlighted a distinct correlation between the amount of household debt present before a recession and subsequent cuts in spending during it.
For example, countries like Ireland and Denmark experienced larger increases in their household debt than the United States in the decade leading up to 2007, resulting in greater cuts in its household spending during this period.
Hence it goes without saying that monitoring data related to consumer debt is essential for predicting how severe a recession might be because banking crises with low levels of private debts typically do not lead to devastating effects on an economy.
The Poor Suffer Disproportionately When The Housing Bubble Burst
The housing crisis of the early 2000s harmed those with the least economic resources more than any other faction.
When people stretch themselves to buy a home and take on loans, they become what is known as the junior claim, while the banks take senior claim.
This means that any dips in house prices are absorbed primarily by the borrowers, rather than their lenders; losses are magnified if a borrower already has debt compared to if they had assets.
Particularly hard-hit were those whose main source of equity was tied up in their home.
When real estate values plummeted, the poorer members of society suffered disproportionately more than their richer counterparts.
People in the lowest economic quintile had 80 percent debt against only 20 percent assets, while those in the highest fifth held 90 percent assets and just 10 percent debt.
It only got worse from there as foreclosures and negative equity came into play: nearly 25% of all mortgaged households lost money due to a steep drop off in value when selling their property – some even resulting in foreclosure proceedings – pushing down local surrounding prices regardless of whether or not they held debt against them.
In fact, foreclosures were so common by 2011 that together with short sales made up 40% of all house sales during this time.
How Debt-Heavy Homeowners Drive Job Losses During Economic Downturns
In the House of Debt Book Summary, it’s clear that when a recession hits, those households with heavy debt levels take it harder than those without.
When a collapse in housing prices reduces the net worth of borrowers, their spending habits change drastically – in California’s Central Valley, household spending on cars was down 35 percent by 2008.
But what has an even bigger effect is how these changes ripple out from indebted households throughout the rest of the economy.
This can be seen in a drop in both nontradable jobs (such as retailers and restaurants) and tradable jobs related to consumer goods (like cars and electronics) across areas hit by debt-driven recessions and even areas that hadn’t experienced a housing bubble collapse.
In Iowa, for example, tradable jobs dropped by 10 percent due to lower disposable income during the Great Recession.
The effects of debt are clear: When indebted households cut their spending during a recession, jobs are lost all over the entire economy.
The Housing Bubble Was Fueled By Risky Mortgage Lending To Low-Income Borrowers
Banks fueled the housing bubble by granting mortgages to borrowers who wouldn’t have otherwise been able to afford them.
This was especially apparent in areas with low credit scores, where denial rates of mortgage applications decreased and the number of mortgages issued increased each year (in these neighborhoods, denial rates dropped from 42% to 30%, while mortgages increased by 30% annually).
In contrast, neighborhoods with higher credit scores saw very small decreases in denial rates and only 11% growth in mortgages year-over-year.
The expanding credit availability drove house prices upward and gave rise to the housing bubble.
Additionally, demand for houses rose more steeply in cities with an inelastic supply—like San Francisco—than those with an elastic supply like Indianapolis due to the restriction on new construction, leading to inflated prices: up by 50% in high credit score zip codes and 100% in low credit score zip codes.
Ultimately, banks were negligently giving out loans and taking advantage of potential buyers for their own gain during this time period.
They should have assessed people’s ability to pay back their loans beyond just a credit score.
It is important that we learn from this mistake so that it does not occur again.
The Mortgage-Backed Securities Scheme That Led To The Great Recession – And What We Can Do To Avoid The Next One
The Great Recession of 2007 was partly caused by complex financial instruments masking dangerous lending practices and fraudulent activity.
Private mortgage pools were tricked into thinking they were getting super-safe securities, when in reality the underlying mortgages had been misclassified as owner-occupier when they were actually investor-owned.
These private mortgage pools could buy high-risk mortgages that may not have met government standards for securitization, like borrowers with credit score just above 620 rather than below it.
Furthermore, the pools didn’t need income information from borrowers before accepting them – a practice which drove up the rate on bad loans and made them look rosier than they really were.
More investors bought toxic mortgages because of this financial deception, which ultimately crumbled and brought down a large portion of the economy.
It’s clear that there must be tighter regulation to prevent such challenges in the future – making sure this doesn’t happen again!
The Great Recession: Why Bailouts Failed To Stimulate The Economy
When the Great Recession hit, the US government put taxpayers’ money towards protecting banks by providing bailouts.
They were supposed to help improve the economy, but that didn’t happen.
It’s worth noting that loans are assets to a bank, so when households defaulted on their debt around 2006, it caused major problems for banks.
In late 2008, financial institutions had their costs increase significantly, leading to high demands for loans.
This put stress on the borrowing and lending system in our economy.
The Federal Reserve intervened by supplying funding and ultimately this allowed banks to keep on lending despite all the debt accrued by households.
By early 2009, large financial institutions had been bailed out by the government.
But what they found was spending was still down even though banks no longer had issues with debt – clearly something else was causing problems for the economy.
Research showed that people were largely concerned about poor sales instead of loans or interest rates at this time which made sense because consumer spending collapsing was causing serious economic distress.
When comparing this to what happened during the dot-com bubble burst in 2000 where $5 trillion dropped in stock prices yet there was only a minor impact on overall economy is further proof as those stocks were largely owned by wealthy households without much debt.
So it becomes clear that bank bailouts aren’t always the best solution for fixing damage done due to heavy indebtedness among households during an economic crisis.
Debt Forgiveness And Mortgage Cram Downs Can Help Improve The Economy After A Debt-Driven Downturn
Debt forgiveness is a much more effective way of boosting the economy during a recession than government spending or stimulating inflation.
This approach has been proven in history to work, with the US leaving the gold standard and abolishing repayment clauses during the great depression.
This allowed debtors to pay back their loans with newly devalued dollars, thus effectively reducing their debt levels.
More recently, mortgage cram downs have proven effective for those who can’t pay back their loans.
In this case, borrowers can negotiate new payment plans with lower interest and overall balance – thus avoiding foreclosure and highly reduced prices associated with it.
The result is that both debtors and creditors benefit from this policy of debt restructuring and forgiveness.
Debtor’s would be motivated to maintain their payments while banks could still forgive some of the debt without suffering total losses.
Stimulating inflation or engaging in public spending doesn’t encourage repayments in such an efficient manner as debt restructuring does.
Shared Responsibility Mortgages Can Help Prevent The Next Recession By Encouraging More Household Spending And Keeping Job Losses Low
A shared risk mortgage structure could be the key to preventing the next severe recession.
This system, known as Shared Responsibility Mortgages (SRMs), works by creating a system of equity ownership rather than debt-driven mortgages.
With this structure, instead of paying normal interest payments if house prices rise, the borrower agrees to share in five percent of capital gains on the house.
If house prices drop however, these SRMs allow for total mortgage payments to track with a local house price index.
This means that borrowers can keep up with payments and avoid defaulting while still protecting their equity in their home.
It also encourages more household spending – which helps prevent job losses across the economy – as well as lower amounts of negative equity and decreases in net worth among low-income households.
Plus, there’s one additional bonus: Using an SRM system would produce billions in spending without any increase in government expenditure.
If just one million jobs had been saved due to higher consumer spending back in 2006, it could have prevented recession – and when we factor in the impact of a spending multiplier caused by SRMs, up to four million jobs could have been saved!
Wrap Up
The House of Debt book provides a comprehensive explanation of what happened leading up to and during the Great Recession.
It reveals that recessions are usually triggered by an excessive build-up of consumer debt, followed by a decline in household spending and severe job losses across the whole economy.
The financial system was caught in the eye of the storm, as banks encouraged housing bubbles by giving away mortgages to those at risk of defaulting, while complex financial instruments hid all sorts of dangerous lending practices and fraudulent activities.
In light of this evidence, it can be said that it is essential to understand how debt contributes to business cycles in order to prevent or prepare for future critical events.
