Jail the Sub-Prime Loans Marketers...

Discussion in 'Economics' started by 2cents, Aug 13, 2007.

  1. and slap the OCC for letting that shit happen under their watch...

    http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2007/08/the_psychology_of_subprime_mor.php

    "The Psychology of Subprime Mortgages
    Category:
    Posted on: August 9, 2007 10:19 AM, by Jonah Lehrer

    The shit is hitting the fan: all those sub-prime mortgages given out so recklessly over the past two years are getting their interest rates re-adjusted. And that, of course, is when the foreclosures begin.

    By most measures, sub-prime loans are a bad idea. Look, for example, at the popular 2/28 loan, which consists of a low, fixed-interest rate for the first two years and a much higher, adjustable rate for the next twenty-eight. Most people taking out a 2/28 loan can't afford the higher interest rates that will hit later on. It's not unusual for interest payments on a 2/28 loan to double within four years. (That's why you're seeing such high foreclosure rates in the sub-prime market.)

    So why do people take out sub-prime loans? Don't they realize that they won't be able to afford the ensuing 28 years of mortgage payments? I think a big part of the reason sub-prime loans remain so seductive, even when the financial terms are so atrocious, is that they take advantage of a dangerous flaw built into our brain. This flaw is rooted in our emotional brain, which tends to overvalue immediate gains (like a new house) at the expense of future costs (high interest rates). Our feelings are thrilled by the prospect of a new home, but can't really grapple with the long-term fiscal consequences of the decision. Our impulsivity encounters little resistance, and so we sign on the bottom line. We want the house. We'll figure out how to pay for it later.

    The best evidence for this idea comes from the lab of Jonathan Cohen. Cohen's clever experiment went like this: he stuck people in an fMRI machine and made them decide between a small Amazon gift certificate that they could have right away, or a larger gift certificate that they'd receive in 2 to 4 weeks. Contrary to rational models of decision-making, the two options activated very different neural systems. When subjects contemplated gift certificates in the distant future, brain areas associated with rational planning (the Promethean circuits of the prefrontal cortex) were more active. These cortical regions urge us to be patient, to wait a few extra weeks for the bigger gift certificate.

    On the other hand, when subjects started thinking about getting a gift certificate right away, brain areas associated with emotion - like the midbrain dopamine system and NAcc - were turned on. These are the cells that tell us to take out a mortgage we can't afford, or run up credit card debt when we should be saving for retirement. They are our impulsive pleasure seekers, the hedonists inside our head.

    By manipulating the amount of money on offer in each situation, Cohen and his collaborators could watch this neural tug of war unfold. They saw the fierce argument between reason and feeling, as our mind was pulled in contradictory directions. Our ultimate decision--to save for the future or to indulge in the present--was determined by whichever region showed greater activation. More emotions meant more impulsivity.

    This discovery has important implications. (A more recent paper by the Cohen lab extends the theory.) For starters, it locates the neural source for many of our financial errors. When we opt for a 2/28 mortgage, we are acting like experimental subjects choosing the wrong gift certificate. Because the emotional parts of our brain reliably undervalue the future - life is short and they want pleasure now - we end up delaying saving until tomorrow (and tomorrow and tomorrow.) George Loewenstein, a neuroeconomist at Carnegie Mellon University and a collaborator on the Cohen paper, thinks that understanding how we make decisions will help economists develop better public policies: "Our emotions are like programs that evolved to solve important and recurring problems in our distant past," he says. "They are not always well suited to the decisions we make in modern life. It's important to know how our emotions lead us astray so that we can design incentives and programs to help compensate for our irrational biases." "


    not exactly a surprise innit...
     
  2. Surprised by recent event unfolding; no big lawsuit against bond rating companies yet; so we just have to wait for more. This is just a beginning.
     
  3. moody's and McGraw Hill are trading like the lawyers are at the gates...

    how can a tranche of BBB- paper turn into AAA based on default distribution to the middle tranches.......

    securities lawyers must be dancing on their desks
     
  4. Sashe

    Sashe

    The biggest lure of the mortgage marketers was when they told you to take out an ARM and "if things don't work out then you can always sell your house in 2 years for a huge profit, cuz in 2 years it will be worth a gazillion bucks"
     
  5. Yeah, the securities lawyers must be in a similar mood like this kid =>

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  6. ElCubano

    ElCubano

    people take out these loans ( neg-amt and the rest of these exotic loans) in a rising market to speculate with less out of pocket and a bigger bang for the buck....90% didnt think they would be holding the property 3 years later in a falling market to find themselves in deep shit...then you have the reckless people who actually took out this loan to get into something they couldnt afford...but i believe most of these loans where giving to specualtors who where looking to flip-dat-house....peace
     
  7. ElCubano

    ElCubano

    exactly......