Economia

En el capítulo 4, examina cómo se otorgaron las hipotecas a miles de ciudadanos sin exigirles una garantía. Lo preocupante es que los financieros olvidaron su sensatez y se vieron con decenas de casas devueltas cuando el precio de la hipoteca era mayor que la casa.

En el capítulo 5, señala que la Reserva Federal de EEUU concedió dinero del contribuyente para tapar los agujeros de los bancos,con un cheque en blanco y sin dar explicaciones. Stiglitz sospecha que muchos bancos y aseguradoras inflaron sus pérdidas para obtener más dinero del rescate. Los bancos obtuvieron la liquidez deseada pero no concedieron los créditos a las empresas como hubiera deseado el Gobierno. Además, este compró bonos-basura y activos tóxicos y dejó en manos de los bancos aquellos que se podían salvar. Laspérdidas las asumió el contribuyente.

Capitulo 4.

THE WHEELINGS AND DEALINGS OF THE MORTGAGE industry in the United States will be remembered as the great scam of the early twenty-first

century. Owning a home has always been a staple of the American dream and indeed an aspiration all over the world. When U.S. banks and mortgage
companies started offering cheap mortgages, many people rushedto get a piece of the action.1 Millions took on mortgages they could not afford. When
interest rates started to rise, they lost their homes and whatever equity they had put in.2
This housing disaster had knock-on effects at home and abroad. Through a process known as securitization, the mortgages had been sliced and
diced, packaged and repackaged, and passed on to all manner of banks andinvestment funds around the country. When the house of cards finally
collapsed, it took some of the most venerable institutions along with it: Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, and Merrill Lynch. But the travails did not stop at
U.S. borders. These securitized mortgages, many sold around the world, turned out to be toxic for banks and investment funds as far away as northern
Norway, Bahrain, and China.In the summer of 2007, I met an Indonesian fund manager at a conference organized by Indonesia’s central bank. She was
stunned by the losses and felt guilty that she had exposed her clients to the shaky American market. She explained that because these instruments were
made in the United States, she thought they were good investment for her clients. “The American mortgage market is so big. Wenever thought it would
have problems,” she told me.
Excessive risk coupled with excessive leverage had created what seemed like high returns—and they were high for a while. Wall Street thought
that by repackaging the mortgages and passing them on to numerous investors, they were sharing the risk and protecting themselves. With risk widely
shared, it could easily be absorbed. But securitizing themortgages actually made them more risky. The bankers who precipitated the problems are now
saying it was not completely their fault. Dick Parsons, the chairman of Citigroup, exemplifies the bankers’ view: “Besides banks, there was reduced
regulatory oversight, loans to unqualified borrowers were encouraged and people took out mortgages or home-equity loans they couldn’t afford.”3
Executiveslike Parsons are blaming the borrowers for buying houses they could not afford, but many of these borrowers were financially illiterate
and did not understand what they were getting into. This was especially true in the subprime mortgage market, which became the epicenter of the crisis.
Subprime mortgages were mortgages given to individuals who were less qualified than those given “conventional”mortgages, for example, because of
low or unstable income. Other homeowners were encouraged by lenders to treat their houses as ATMs, repeatedly borrowing against their value. For
instance, Doris Canales’s home was threatened with foreclosure after she refinanced her home thirteen times in six years with “no-doc” mortgages, which
required low or no documentation of income or assets. “They’d...