Global Financial Crisis There were a number of causes to the global financial crisis of 2007-2009. Baily, Litan and Johnson (2008) argue that there were numerous contributing factors, including the perception of a low risk U.S. housing market, securitization of the housing market, credit rating agencies, and the spread of these securities to financial institutions around the world. The primary contagion came from the United States, beginning in 2007, but there were contributing factors in many European countries as well.

housing market entered a bubble state, with rapidly increasing prices. This was the result of changes to the way that mortgages were financed, bringing more and riskier consumers into the housing market. This in turn fuelled speculators. Banks were able to securitize risk from the housing marketing. In complex transactions they were able to offload much of the risk onto other financial institutions around the world. Credit rating agencies, lacking a clear understanding of the products, rated them as secure investments. These "secure" investments offered returns much higher than investments of similar "security," but of...

However, they had become popular investment items for banks around the world as the result of their apparent security. This is what made the crisis global in nature, rather than just an American problem -- banks all over the world were buying these securities. Baily et al. (2008) noted that risk management was poor. In countries where banks exercise proper risk management -- Australia and Canada notably -- the economic crisis was nowhere near as intense.
Tridico (2012) explains what happened next. With uneven income distribution, the increase in consumer credit represented by the new mortgage market in the U.S. was unsustainable, and inevitably it began to collapse shortly after the U.S. Federal Reserve increased interest rates -- most mortgages were on floating terms with low introductory rates. This resulted in a dramatic increase in mortgage defaults, threatening the supposedly secure mortgage-backed securities. Banks heavily invested in these securities, such as Lehman Brothers, went bankrupt, causing a mass crisis of confidence in the entire financial system, and this crisis of…