Lehman Brothers
Part A:
1. Introduction
The Financial Crisis of 2007-2010 is often cited as the most significant downturn in the economy since the Great Depression of the 1930s. It erupted on August 9, 2007 and spread throughout the advanced market economies such as the US and the UK.
The Financial crisis of 2007 is notably different from other crises we faced, for instance Anthony
Herbst and Joseph Wu (2009) argued that ‘the financial crisis of this first decade of the 3rd millennium has features that make it both severe and somewhat intractable’. The crisis is argued to be not exogenous to our capitalist economic system, since it is intimately connected to financial innovation and de-regulation in financial markets. Furthermore, as Herbst and Wu (2009) advocate,
‘the current pandemic’ should be discussed in the light of ‘the political wrapper surrounding many aspects of it, and the threads running through it’. The economic situation and financial behaviour are always affected by political realm, so it is also necessary to consider political factors in evaluation of the crisis.
General causes of this crisis are still being debated in the academic literature, and this paper aims to provide a relatively comprehensive outlook on the most common and empirically successful accounts of factors that contributed to the crisis. This report is organised as follows: part 1 provides a brief introduction to the current financial crisis; part 2 briefly evaluates the possible causes; part 3 examines whether insufficient regulation was the primary reason to all other listed causes of the crises and thus can be regarded as the primary cause of the recent collapse; part 4 concludes. Even though lax regulation has contributed significantly to the origination and development of the crisis, by examining other possible causes I explicitly argue that it is the interplay of different factors that shaped the crisis in the form we faced it in 2007.
2. Causes of the crisis.
1. Introduction
The Financial Crisis of 2007-2010 is often cited as the most significant downturn in the economy since the Great Depression of the 1930s. It erupted on August 9, 2007 and spread throughout the advanced market economies such as the US and the UK.
The Financial crisis of 2007 is notably different from other crises we faced, for instance Anthony
Herbst and Joseph Wu (2009) argued that ‘the financial crisis of this first decade of the 3rd millennium has features that make it both severe and somewhat intractable’. The crisis is argued to be not exogenous to our capitalist economic system, since it is intimately connected to financial innovation and de-regulation in financial markets. Furthermore, as Herbst and Wu (2009) advocate,
‘the current pandemic’ should be discussed in the light of ‘the political wrapper surrounding many aspects of it, and the threads running through it’. The economic situation and financial behaviour are always affected by political realm, so it is also necessary to consider political factors in evaluation of the crisis.
General causes of this crisis are still being debated in the academic literature, and this paper aims to provide a relatively comprehensive outlook on the most common and empirically successful accounts of factors that contributed to the crisis. This report is organised as follows: part 1 provides a brief introduction to the current financial crisis; part 2 briefly evaluates the possible causes; part 3 examines whether insufficient regulation was the primary reason to all other listed causes of the crises and thus can be regarded as the primary cause of the recent collapse; part 4 concludes. Even though lax regulation has contributed significantly to the origination and development of the crisis, by examining other possible causes I explicitly argue that it is the interplay of different factors that shaped the crisis in the form we faced it in 2007.
2. Causes of the crisis.
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