In this lively new book, Kathleen C. Engel and Patricia A. McCoy tell the full story behind the subprime crisis. The authors, experts in the law and economics of financial regulation and consumer lending, offer a sharply reasoned, but accessible account of the actions that produced the greatest economic collapse since the Great Depression.
This book explores the political, economic and regulatory context in which credit regulation is taking place following the global financial crisis. It suggests that current neoliberal economic policies favour multi-national corporations rather than consumers and examines regulatory responses to the internationalization of consumer finance protection. Detailing how EU consumers have been affected by national economic conditions, the book also analyses the lending regimes of Europe, Australia, the US and South Africa and offers suggestions for responsible lending to avoid over-indebtedness and corrupt mortgage-lending. Finally, new approaches and directions for consumer credit regulations are outlined, such as protection for small businesses, protection against risky credit products, reorganization of mortgage securitization and the possibility of a partnership model to address financial exclusion. The book includes contributions from leading names in the field of consumer law and will be invaluable to those interested in banking, business and commercial law.
Financial regulation can fail when it is needed the most. The dynamics of asset price bubbles weaken financial regulation just as financial markets begin to overheat and the risk of crisis spikes. At the same time, the failure of financial regulations adds further fuel to a bubble. This book examines the interaction of bubbles and financial regulation. It explores the ways in which bubbles lead to the failure of financial regulation by outlining five dynamics, which it collectively labels the "Regulatory Instability Hypothesis." . The book concludes by outlining approaches to make financial regulation more resilient to these dynamics that undermine law.
This book offers a critical engagement with languages that describe, perpetuate, respond to, and resist economic crises. Unlike many volumes on economic crises that offer economistic explanations of their causes or policy suggestions for their resolution, this collection explores the different types of language used to deal with complex economic phenomena. The chapters in this volume examine a range of connections between language and crises: from the metaphors used historically to describe economic crises, to the languages deployed within periods of crises and economic struggle, to the popular responses thereto (including political manifestations and worker-organized enterprises). Also considered are the implications for democratic participation and gender relations, and the lack of language to express economic experience amongst certain groups. With essays from seven contributors representing five different countries, this collection has global relevance in a time marked by economic volatility and upheaval, and will serve as a valuable resource for those interested in the politics of language, economic discourse and the epistemological complexities of economic crises. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Cultural Economy.
Meltdown reveals how the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was able to curb important unsafe and unfair practices that led to the recent financial crisis. In interviews with key government, industry, and advocacy groups along with deep archival research, Kirsch and Squires show where the CFPB was able to overcome many abusive practices, where it was less able to do so, and why. Open for business in 2011, the CFPB was Congress's response to the financial catastrophe that shattered millions of middle-class and lower-income households and threatened the stability of the global economy. But only a few years later, with U.S. economic conditions on a path to recovery, there are already disturbing signs of the (re)emergence of the high-risk, high-reward credit practices that the CFPB was designed to curb. This book profiles how the Bureau has attempted to stop abusive and discriminatory lending practices in the mortgage and automobile lending sectors and documents the multilayered challenges faced by an untested new regulatory agency in its efforts to transform the broken—but lucrative—business practices of the financial services industry. Authors Kirsch and Squires raise the question of whether the consumer protection approach to financial services reform will succeed over the long term in light of political and business efforts to scuttle it. Case studies of mortgage and automobile lending reforms highlight the key contextual and structural conditions that explain the CFPB's ability to transform financial service industry business models and practices. Meltdown: The Financial Crisis, Consumer Protection, and the Road Forward is essential reading for a wide audience, including anyone involved in the provision of financial services, staff of financial services and consumer protection regulatory agencies, and fair lending and consumer protection advocates. Its accessible presentation of financial information will also serve students and general readers.
The Covid-19 pandemic has induced a crisis grasping the world abruptly, simultaneously, and swiftly. As a critical juncture, it ignited a change of era for international business. This book illustrates how governments have dealt with the pandemic and the consequent impacts on international business. It also explores the disrupted operations and responses of businesses as their worldwide interconnectivity has been seriously threatened. The book discourses multidirectional aspects of the effects of Covid-19 on international business, ranging from the juxtaposing forces disrupting globalization and installing a change of era through decoupling of technological, production and knowledge flows to its stimulating aspects to the strategic response on business, industry and state level. The book contains thirty chapters that offer a multidimensional interpretation of impacts of Covid-19 on international business theory and practice. Employing the latest state of knowledge on the topic, the book is aimed at international business audience - scholars, students and managers who need to understand better the nature, scope and scale of the impacts of the pandemic on international business.
This volume is jointly written by twenty experts and scholars from China. It aims to reflect and answer at least two kinds of questions from historical experience and academic perspective. First, how to view the world in the post-pandemic era? Second, how to view China in the post-pandemic era? From the perspective of macroeconomics and international relations, the book discusses in detail the trend of economic globalization, the risk of global economic recession, the industrial chain affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, the world order in the post-pandemic era, global governance, and relations between and among major world powers. This book presents Chinese scholars' in-depth and timely reflections on the international pattern of the post-pandemic era. It will be a great read for students and scholars of international relations, East Asian studies, and those interested in the world economy in general.
Emerging relatively unscathed from the banking crisis of 2008, China has been viewed as a model of both rampant success and fiscal stability. But beneath the surface lies a network of fissures that look likely to erupt into the next big financial crash. A bloated real-estate sector, roller-coaster stock market, and rapidly growing shadow-banking sector have all coalesced to create a perfect storm: one that is in danger of taking the rest of the world’s economy with it. Walden Bello traces our recent history of financial crises – from the bursting of Japan’s ‘bubble economy’ in 1990 to Wall Street in 2008 – taking in their political and human ramifications such as rising inequality and environmental degradation. He not only predicts that China might be the site of the next crash, but that under neoliberalism this will simply keep happening. The only way that we can stop this cycle, Bello argues, is through a fundamental change in the ways that we organise: a shift to cooperative enterprise, respectful of the environment, and which fractures the twin legacies of imperialism and capitalism. Insightful, erudite and passionate, Paper Dragons is a must-read for anyone wishing to prevent the next financial meltdown.
Today, in 2012, the country is again just as torn as it has was in the 1970s due once again to Middle East wars, the Great Recession of 2007 - 2012, President Obama's constant and incendiary rhetoric, incessant politicking over race, ObamaCare, divisive dialogue of the haves and have-nots, his infamous campaign gaffe to Joe the Plumber, "spread the wealth around", the "99% vs the Top 1%" (class warfare), "millionaires and billionaires" and his war with big business. So much for "Hope and Change", "Change We Can Believe In" and my favorite "the first post-racial president." To the contrary, the United States of America is as unsettled, divided and angry as I have seen it since the 1960's and the early 1970's. The big questions are easy ones: "Why?" and "What caused this return to the anger and the hostilities of the 60's and 70's?" Since I am part of the baby boom generation and was very much a participant in both the professions of Wall Street and mortgage banking, I am in a unique position to tell you about what I saw and heard up close and personal in the 1960's - 1970's AND about the decade that led up to what culminated in the Great Recession of 2007-2012 that we are still clawing our way out of. Here are a few things that might surprise you, further discussed in this book: 1. The overwhelming majority of "Greedy Wall Streeters" and "Fat Cat Bankers" are massive and consistent donors to liberal Democrats, even in 2012 in the face of Obama's persistent (and false) accusations of casting them as the "fat cat bankers" and "greedy Wall Streeters" as causing the recession! 2. The senior most executives in these companies pilloried by President Obama, gave upwards of 60% of total donations, over $20M, to Obama's 2008 presidential campaign and his Political Action Committees into 2009. 3. The earliest beginnings of the current Financial Crisis started back in the late 1970's. 4. Some of the names that were catalysts of the Financial Crisis are very well known activists, anarchists, life-long socialists, present and former D.C. politicians and three very well known U.S. presidents. 5. And, just in case you have not done your research or taken the time to trace the trail of bread crumbs back to the source... you need to know the irrefutable reality that: The Subprime Mortgage Crisis = The Financial Crisis of 2007 - 2012 6. From the very beginnings of The Financial Crisis in the fall of 2007, the media referred to this as The Subprime Mortgage Crisis, until they didn't.
The global financial and economic crisis that hit the world since 2008 has affected the lives of many people all over the world and resulted in declining incomes, rising unemployment, foreclosures, forced residential moves, and cut-backs in government expenditure. The extent to which the crisis has affected urban neighborhoods and has led to rising intra-urban inequalities, has not yet received much attention. The implemented budget cuts and austerity programs of national and local governments are likely to have hit some neighborhoods more than others. The authors of this this book, which come from a variety of countries and disciplines, show that the economic crisis has affected poor neighborhoods more severely than more affluent ones. The tendency of the state to retreat from these neighborhoods has negative consequences for their residents and may even nullify the investments that have been made in many poor neighborhoods in the recent past. This book was originally published as a special issue of Urban Geography.