About 10 years ago, at that time, advertisements of loan companies appeared on TV, newspapers and streets, or your mailbox was filled with attractive leaflets:
"Have you ever thought about the life of the middle class? Buy a house! "
"Savings is not enough? Loan! "
"There is no income? Looking for A Niu Loan Company! "
"Can't afford the down payment? We offer zero down payment! "
"Worried that interest is too high? We offer a preferential interest rate of 3% for the first two years! "
"Still can't afford it every month? It doesn't matter, you only need to pay interest in the first 24 months, and you can also repay the loan principal two years later! Think about it, after two years, you must have found a job or been promoted to a manager, and you are afraid that you can't afford it! "
"Worried that you can't afford it after two years? Oh, you are too careful. Look at how much the house has risen now compared with two years ago. Then you can sell it to others, not only for two years, but also at a profit! Besides, you don't have to pay. I believe you can do it. I dare you to borrow it? "
Under such temptation, countless American citizens did not hesitate to choose a loan to buy a house. Are you worried about their debts in two years? American citizens who have always felt good about themselves will tell you that anyone who plays movies can be a governor, and maybe I can run for president in two years. )
A Niu Loan Company has made amazing achievements in just a few months, but all the money has been lent out. Can it be redeemed? Mr. A Niu, the chairman of the company, is also familiar with American economic history. It is impossible not to know that there are risks in the real estate market, so it seems that he can't absorb the benefits himself, and he needs to find a partner to share the risks. So A Niu found the leading brother in American economic circles-investment bank. These people are big names (Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Morgan). What do they do every day? Even if you are full, you are idle, so you find a Nobel economist, a Harvard professor, use the latest economic data model, make some repairs, and make several analysis reports to evaluate whether a stock is worth buying. A country's stock market has been bubbled, and a group of risk-averse people cheat to eat and drink in the risk assessment market. Do you think they see the risks? You can tell with your feet! But there are profits, so why hesitate? Take over! Therefore, economists and university professors repackaged the data model and the old three-sample evaluation, and put forward a new product-CDO (Note: Debt-backed Bond), which is a bond after all. By issuing and selling such CDO bonds, bondholders can share the risk of housing loans.
If you sell it like this, the risk is too high or no one will buy it. Assume that the risk level of the original bond is 6, which belongs to medium and high. So investment banks divide it into two parts: advanced CDO and ordinary CDO. In the case of debt crisis, the old CDO enjoys the priority of compensation. In this way, the risk levels of the two parts become 4 and 8 respectively, and the total risk remains unchanged, but the former belongs to medium and low risk bonds. With the investment bank's golden words, of course, it sold a full house! But what about the remaining high-risk bonds with a risk rating of 8?
So the investment bank found a hedge fund. Who is the hedge fund? It is the role of the financial circles all over the world to buy empty goods and sell more, licking blood. This is a small risk! So relying on the old relationship, I borrowed money from the bank with the lowest interest rate in the world, and then bought this part of ordinary CDO bonds in large quantities. Before 2006, the loan interest rate of the Bank of Japan was only1.5%; The interest rate of ordinary CDO may reach 12%, so hedge funds will make a lot of money just by interest difference.
In this way, something wonderful happened. At the end of 200 1, American real estate soared, more than doubling in just a few years. In this way, just like the advertisement at the beginning of the A Niu loan company, there will be no problem of not being able to afford the house. Even if there is no money to pay back, you can make a fortune selling the house. As a result, everyone from mortgage buyers to A Niu loan companies, major investment banks, banks and hedge funds made money, but the investment banks were not very happy! At first, I thought the risk of ordinary CDO was too high, so I threw it to hedge funds. I didn't expect these guys to earn more than themselves, and their net worth is still rising. I knew I kept it for fun, so the investment bank started buying hedge funds and planned to share it. It's like "Old Black" eating a bad meal at home and happened to see that annoying puppy next door and was going to poison it. I didn't expect the puppy to eat it, but it became stronger and stronger. "Old Black" was cheated. Is rotten rice more nutritious, so he began to eat it himself!
Now hedge funds are very happy. Who are they, bandits who have 10 in their hands and can still try to borrow 10 to play? How can they be honest with a popular CDO now? So they mortgaged their CDO bonds to the bank, got a loan of 10 times, and then continued to chase after investment banks to buy ordinary CDOs. Hey, we signed an agreement, and these CDOs are all ours! ! ! The investment bank is unhappy. In addition to continuing to buy hedge funds, they also came up with a new product called CDS. Wall Street is a hotbed of these genius products: everyone thinks that the original CDO is risky, so I will take out insurance and give some money from the CDO to the insurance company every year, free of charge, but if there is any risk in the future, everyone will bear it together.
The insurance company thought, yes, at present, CDO makes so much money that 1 divides the money into profits without losing it. Isn't that giving us money for nothing every year? Fuck!
Hedge funds thought, yes, it has been earned for several years, and the risks will become bigger and bigger in the future. Just by sharing part of the profits, the insurance company will bear half of the risks. Let's do it!
So once again, everyone is happy and CDS is on fire! But things didn't end there: because "smart" Wall Street people have come up with innovative products based on CD! Suppose CDS brings us 5 billion yuan in income. Now I have newly developed a "Sanmao" fund, which specializes in investing in buying CDs. Obviously, this fund based on a series of previous products is very risky, but I invested 5 billion as a deposit. If this fund loses money, use this 5 billion to advance it. Only when this 5 billion is lost will the principal of your investment begin to lose money. God, is there a better fund than this? 1 yuan face value of the fund, lost 0.90 yuan will not lose their own money, but every penny earned is their own! When rating agencies saw this genius idea, they didn't hesitate at all: give AAA rating!
As a result, this "San Mao" can be sold crazy, and various pension funds, education funds, wealth management products, and even banks in other countries have also bought it. Although the initial scale was set at 50 billion yuan, it was almost impossible to estimate how many billion yuan was issued later, but the deposit of 5 billion yuan remained unchanged. If the existing scale is 500 billion yuan, the deposit can only guarantee that you will not lose money if the net value of the fund is not less than 0.99 yuan.
By the end of 2006, the American real estate, which has enjoyed a beautiful scenery for five years, finally fell from its peak, and this food chain finally began to break. Because of the falling house prices, the time limit for preferential loan interest rates has come. First, ordinary people can't repay their loans, and then the A Niu loan company closed down, and hedge funds suffered huge losses, which in turn implicated insurance companies and loan banks. Citigroup and Morgan issued huge loss reports one after another, at the same time, the major investment banks that invested in hedge funds also suffered losses. Then the stock market plummeted, people generally lost money, and the number of people unable to repay their mortgages continued to increase ... Finally, the subprime mortgage crisis broke out in the United States.