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The U.S. subprime mortgage crisis was a set of events and conditions that led to a financial crisis and subsequent recession that began in 2005. It was characterized by a rise in subprime mortgage delinquencies and foreclosures, and the resulting decline of securities backed by said mortgages. Several major financial institutions collapsed in September 2008, with significant disruption in the flow of credit to businesses and consumers and the onset of a severe global recession. Government housing policies, over-regulation, failed regulation and deregulation have all been claimed as causes of the crisis, along with many others. While the modern financial system evolved, regulation did not keep pace and became mismatched with the risks building in the economy. The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) tasked with investigating the causes of the crisis reported in January 2011 that: "We had a 21st-century financial system with 19th-century safeguards."〔 Increasing home ownership has been the goal of several presidents including Roosevelt, Reagan, Clinton and George W. Bush.〔(Whitehouse-President Hosts Conference on Minority Home Ownership-October 15, 2002 )〕 However, the FCIC wrote that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, government affordable housing policies, and the Community Reinvestment Act were not primary causes of the crisis.〔(Financial Inquiry Commission-Final Report-Retrieved February 2013 )〕 Failure to regulate the non-depository banking system (also called the shadow banking system) has also been blamed.〔 The non-depository system grew to exceed the size of the regulated depository banking system,〔(Geithner-Speech Reducing Systemic Risk in a Dynamic Financial System )〕 but the investment banks, insurers, hedge funds, and money market funds were not subject to the same regulations. Many of these institutions suffered the equivalent of a bank run,〔(The Economist-Shine a Light-March 25, 2010 )〕 with the notable collapses of Lehman Brothers and AIG during September 2008 precipitating a financial crisis and subsequent recession. The government also repealed or implemented several laws that limited the regulation of the banking industry, such as the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act and implementation of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000. The former allowed depository and investment banks to merge while the latter limited the regulation of financial derivatives. ''Note: A general discussion of the causes of the Subprime mortgage crisis is included in Subprime mortgage crisis, Causes and Causes of the 2007–2012 global financial crisis. This article focuses on a subset of causes related to affordable housing policies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and government regulation.'' ==Legislative and regulatory overview== Deregulation, excess regulation, and failed regulation by the federal government have all been blamed for the late-2000s (decade) subprime mortgage crisis in the United States.〔("Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission Report" )〕 In general, conservatives have claimed that the financial crisis was caused by too much regulation aimed at increasing home ownership rates for lower income people.〔 They have pointed to two policies in particular: the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) of 1977 (particularly as modified in the 1990s), which they claim pressured private banks to make risky loans, and HUD affordable housing goals for the government-sponsored enterprises ("GSEs") — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — which they claim caused the GSEs to purchase risky loans,〔Michael Simkovic, ("Competition and Crisis in Mortgage Securitization" )〕 and led to a general breakdown in underwriting standards for all lending. Liberals present data that suggest GSE loans were less risky and performed better than loans securitized by more lightly regulated Wall Street banks.〔 They also suggest that CRA loans mandated by the government performed better than subprime loans that were purely market-driven.〔〔 They also present data which suggests that financial firms that lobbied the government most aggressively also had the riskiest lending practices, and lobbied for relief from regulations that were limiting their ability to take greater risks.〔 In testimony before Congress both the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Alan Greenspan claimed failure in allowing the self-regulation of investment banks. The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission issued three concluding documents in January 2011: 1) The FCIC "conclusions" or report from the six Democratic Commissioners; 2) a "dissenting statement" from the three Republican Commissioners; and 3) a second "dissenting statement" from Commissioner Peter Wallison. Both the Democratic majority conclusions and Republican minority dissenting statement, representing the views of nine of the ten commissioners, concluded that government housing policies had little to do with the crisis. The majority report stated that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac "were not a primary cause of the crisis" and that the Community Reinvestment Act "was not a significant factor in subprime lending or the crisis."〔(Financial Inquiry Commission-Final Report-Retrieved February 2013 )〕 The three Republican authors of their dissenting statement wrote: "Credit spreads declined not just for housing, but also for other asset classes like commercial real estate. This tells us to look to the credit bubble as an essential cause of the U.S. housing bubble. It also tells us that problems with U.S. housing policy or markets do not by themselves explain the U.S. housing bubble."〔 However, Commissioner Wallison's dissenting statement did place the blame squarely on government housing policies, which in his view contributed to an excessive number of high-risk mortgages: "...I believe that the sine qua non of the financial crisis was U.S. government housing policy, which led to the creation of 27 million subprime and other risky loans—half of all mortgages in the United States—which were ready to default as soon as the massive 1997–2007 housing bubble began to deflate. If the U.S. government had not chosen this policy path—fostering the growth of a bubble of unprecedented size and an equally unprecedented number of weak and high risk residential mortgages—the great financial crisis of 2008 would never have occurred."〔 In a working paper released in late 2012, the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), the arbiters of the Business Cycle, presented "Did the Community Reinvestment Act Lead to Risky Lending?" The economists compared "the lending behavior of banks undergoing CRA exams within a given census tract in a given month (the treatment group) to the behavior of banks operating in the same census tract-month that did not face these exams (the control group). This comparison clearly indicates that adherence to the CRA led to riskier lending by banks." They concluded: "The evidence shows that around CRA examinations, when incentives to conform to CRA standards are particularly high, banks not only increase lending rates but also appear to originate loans that are markedly riskier.〔"Did the Community Reinvestment Act Lead to Risky Lending?" 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Government policies and the subprime mortgage crisis」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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