The Subprime Solution: How Today's Global Financial Crisis Happened, and What to Do about It

Everyone nowadays seems to agree on the root cause of the current economic crisis; it is the bursting of the real estate bubble. But what caused this bubble? What hazard does its bursting pose to the solvency of financial institutions? What steps can be taken to heal the economy and prevent similar calamities in the future? In The Subprime Solution, Robert J. Shiller proposes answers to these questions. The answers that he offers represent a furthering of earlier research that he has done on the subject of bubbles that have occurred in other markets besides real estate. In the first edition of his earlier work, Irrational Exuberance (2000), Shiller correctly predicted the bursting of the bubble in technology stocks. According to Shiller, both the technology bubble and the housing bubble are due to the same basic cause, namely widespread and misplaced confidence among the investing public. As such, they can be characterized as speculative bubbles, the "speculative" modifier being the key point that distinguishes Shiller's analysis from other competing theories. Shiller explains that speculative bubbles are psychological in origin. When a home buying frenzy ensues in a given locale, home prices rise due to increased demand. The price increases support the widespread belief that declines in real estate value will not occur, in turn feeding the buying frenzy. In effect, the phenomenon is a vicious circle, which feeds upon itself. Eventually, the prices of homes become inflated far beyond what is explicable in terms of building costs, land availability, and other economic fundamentals. It is under such conditions that the market is ripe for a downturn. The misplaced confidence in the real estate market not only affected individuals, but it affected lending institutions as well, and here lies the key to the current crisis. For years, there has been a culture among lenders of rubber-stamping home loan applications, and a failure take the obvious steps of verifying the borrower's income and credit history. These practices resulted from a misplaced confidence in the quality of the home as an instrument of collateral, and accordingly the expectation that cases of default would not cause a significant loss to the lender. Lenders have relied on economic models that failed to take into account the devastating effects of a sharp downturn in home prices, on the assumption that such downturns would never occur. What can be done to heal our economy, and to prevent similar calamities in the future? The first and obvious answer is better education for both individuals and institutions as to investment risks. Another, more controversial answer is bailouts, and Shiller supports their use. Shiller is quick to admit that bailouts are unfair, in that they penalize those who behave responsibly and forgive the misdeeds of the reckless. Interest rate cuts designed to ward off foreclosure for those with variable rate mortgages are one type of bail

Robert Shiller's "The Subprime Solution" provides an interesting and important perspective on the financial crisis. While other commentators focus on the individual products and entities that contributed to the crisis, Shiller takes a broader view. He asks, "Why did so many people across America use risky adjustable-rate mortgages to buy houses they couldn't afford? Why did Wall Street clamor for collateralized-debt obligations based on these mortgages?" His answer: a flawed collective belief that housing prices in America would rise continually. This conclusion is important in itself, for it flies in the face of conventional economic wisdom. According to Shiller, investors are not eternally rational but subject to periodic infection by social contagions like the housing bubble. Shiller complements this analysis with a visionary explanation of mechanisms that could be used to minimize the effect of real estate bubbles in the long run. While this explanation is brief (the book is well under 200 pages,) it leaves the reader with plenty to think about. My only criticism is that the book could use more analysis of the psychology behind the current bubble. Shiller asserts that the expansion of capitalism in China and India somehow affirmed Americans' notion that the land available for housing is scarce and thus valuable. This just doesn't seem plausible. Americans are no doubt aware how Chinese growth can affect the price of commodities like oil, but it seems highly unlikely that Asian investors are going to start buying up plots of land in Pittsburgh and Peoria. Overall, however, the book is a great read.

For Prof. R.J. Shiller, the root of the subprime mortgage crisis in the US is a myth, the belief that real estate prices must strongly trend upward for demographic reasons. He proves that the price of real estate, to the contrary, is trending lower. What went up are the quality and the dimension of the average individual houses. But what about `land'? Didn't Mark Twain recommend strongly: `Go for land. They've stopped producing it.'? R.J. Shiller remarks cleverly that only 2,6 % of US land is used for urbanization. Another factor of the bubble was psychological: the human herd instinct. There was a social contagion of boom thinking. A third, more specific, factor was the deliberate governmental policy to promote home-ownership as much as possible. This should be good for the Party. When the real estate bubble burst, it disrupted immediately the credit markets. Aggressive mortgage lenders never worried about repayment risks. They repackaged the mortgages, got top ratings from the rating agencies and sold their packages to third parties all over the world. But even more importantly, the crisis damaged the `social fabric', the way of life of millions of families and also human relationships (through aggressive creditors). It created an atmosphere of distrust, of hoarding, with runs on banks; in one word, it gave rise to a psychological environment that could lead to a severe and long depression, which would hurt all citizens. Therefore, the subprime crisis must be solved. Prof. R.J. Shiller makes a distinction between the short term and the long term solution. In the short term, there should be a massive bail-out in order to prevent an escalation of the crisis and of the economic downturn. In the long term, the US government should create a basic social contract and protect every citizen against major misfortune. It should impose financial democracy through standardized full disclosure documents so that everybody should get better information about all the risks involved. Without affecting individual privacy, indicators should be created about the real value of real estate. Those should lead to a more efficient pricing of houses and to a stabilization of the market. Prof. R.J. Shiller did not only recommend these policies, but created an indicator himself. With an open and clear-sighted mind, Prof. Shiller wrote a small, but essential, book about a dramatic worldwide crisis, without losing the `human touch'. It is an essential read for all those interested in the future of mankind.

Robert Shiller's book doesn't warrant some of the negative reviews on here. In an age of talking heads and pundits who argue more so on the basis of philosophy than on any factual evidence, this book's clear and evidence based examination of the subprime crisis comes as a refreshing alternative. Shiller, a Yale professor of economics, overcomes any temptation to over complicate or to talk down to the reader and gives a frank and detailed assessments of the current mortgage mess, the reasons we're in this crisis, and the possible short and long term solutions. While Shiller explicitly states his view on framing a short term bailout in the early chapters, he has not written a policy paper. Instead, the book is a collection of thoughts and ideas of what would strengthen our financial institutions for the future - ideas like cpi adjusted standards of accounting (unidad de fomento) to weather periods of inflation/ deflation, subsidized financial planning to encourage savings and prevent speculation, and government sponsored financial watchdogs to assist the private investor. Interestingly, Shiller anticipated the anger and the frustration that many average mainstreet americans feel about the current crisis. He warns against excessive finger pointing at officials, borrowers, and lenders. For one thing, they were all trapped in a flawed incentive system. He points to the disaster of the German reparation after WWI as a warning against letting the desire to punish go rampant and cloud pragmatism in making policy. Instead Shiller makes practical recommendations and suggests that once we are out of the current mess, we should structure our financial institutions to prevent future crisis, design insurance against economic/financial downturn, and actively integrate economic theory in public policy. A more controversial topics that Shiller touches on is the role of future markets and derivatives. Here, instead of opting with most financial writers who are now so enchanted with the Buffetian quote about mass financial destruction, Shiller recommends more derivatives and more future markets as a part of the "subprime solution." Although I am convinced by his argument that future markets with enough liquidity will reduce risk and offer hedging insurance against market disruptions, I am rather disappointed that Shiller did not offer an analysis of the argument that derivatives were a part of the "subprime problem." If more financial engineering is in fact a long term solution to financial problems, Shiller should have at least addressed the current negative perception with a sentence or two. I hope that this will be corrected in future editions. Even though "The Subprime Solution" is not an all encompassing treatise of the current financial crisis, it offers strong insights, readability, and wisdom in a time of uncertainty.

Robert Shiller, the prescient author of the book Irrational Exuberance, offers an insightful examination of the causes of the subprime mortgage crisis, and suggests a list of potential measures for the future. He lays the blame for the subprime crisis on the same oblivious fiscal attitudes that led to the technology bubble of the 1990s and the real estate bubble of the 2000s. Both bubbles involved excessive lending and resulted in severe losses for capital providers. His prescription for dealing with the crisis involves a range of policy measures. In the short term, he calls for bailouts for low-income borrowers who got drawn into subprime scams that they did not understand. For the long term, he proposes a new framework for financial institutions, more transparent information, simpler contracts, improved risk-management markets, equity insurance and home loans linked to income, among other measures. Both his diagnosis and his prescription will be controversial, no doubt, but getAbstract thinks his book is a necessary text for anyone who wants to understand what's happened, and how to survive it and learn from it.