Possible Responses To Rising Mortgage Foreclosures

Possible responses to rising mortgage foreclosures : hearing before the Committee on Financial Services, U.S. House of Representatives, One Hundred Tenth Congress, first session, April 17, 2007.

From the Justice Department’s memos defending coerced interrogation to Alberto Gonzales’ firing of U.S. Attorneys who did not fit the Bush Administration’s political needs, Law’s Detour paints an alarming picture of the many detours that George W. Bush and his allies created to thwart transparency and undermine the rule of law after September 11, 2001. Pursuing those detours, Bush officials set up a law-free zone at Guantánamo, ordered massive immigration raids that separated families, and screened candidates for civil service jobs to ensure the hiring of “real Americans.” While government needs flexibility to address genuine risks to national security—which certainly exist in the post-9/11 world—the Bush Administration’s use of detours distracted the government from urgent priorities, tarnished America’s reputation, and threatened voting and civil rights. In this comprehensive analysis of Bush officials’ efforts to stretch and strain the justice system, Peter Margulies canvasses the costs of the Administration’s many detours, from resisting accountability in the war on terrorism to thwarting economic and environmental regulation. Concise and full of compelling anecdotes, Law’s Detour maps these aberrations, surveys the damage done, and reaffirms the virtues of transparency and dialog that the Bush administration dismissed.

Inhaltsangabe:Introduction: The Subprime Crisis became noticeable first in the second half of 2006, when many subprime mortgage borrowers in the United States of America (U.S.) were no longer able to make their loan payments, and securities linked to those mortgages, that had been sold all over the world, turned out to be often worth quite less and in general substantially more risky than market participants had expected. The crisis caused several major financial institutions and mortgage lenders to face substantial liquidity problems or even to file for bankruptcy, and Governments to provide funding in order to limit further damage to the economy. As the market tried to figure out the problems underlying the crisis, financial reporting, especially regarding derecognition of financial assets, special purpose entities and fair value measurement, became a matter of public concern. Consequently, the purpose of this work is to discuss these concerns in order to estimate whether and to what extend financial reporting might have contributed to the crisis and to present and assess the usefulness of actions taken by the U.S. Financial Reporting System in response to the crisis. In order to meet this objective, the second main chapter provides a brief description of how the housing boom and the subsequent crisis evolved. The information provided therein shall contribute to the reader s understanding with respect to the following passages and especially judgements made by the author regarding the role of financial reporting in the crisis. The third main chapter will describe the U.S. Financial Reporting System, by providing basic information about U.S. institutions that authoritatively deal with the elements of the system, including their aims, basics about their work and how they interact. The fourth main section of the paper will examine the relevant reporting concepts and disclosure requirements, provide suggestions for improvements, and assess concerns voiced by market participants with respect to financial reporting. Subsequently, the thesis will analyze and judge actions taken by authoritative institutions of the U.S. Financial Reporting Sytems in response to the crisis. This thesis considered publications issued until December 10, 2008. Inhaltsverzeichnis:Table of Contents: Table of ContentsI List of Abbreviations.III List of SymbolsV 1.Introduction1 2.History of the Subprime Crisis2 2.1The Term Subprime in Context of the Crisis2 2.2Key Causes [...]