The Subprime Mortgage Crisis Explained with Cartoons



If you don’t understand a whit about what’s happening with the credit crisis and the whole subprime mortgage mess, here’s a primer - in cartoon form - at Joey deVilla’s Accordion Guy blog: Link

Or, if you’re literary and like readin’ words, the New York Times has a nice write up.

Raise your hand if you don’t quite understand this whole
financial crisis.

It has been going on for seven months now, and many people probably feel as if they should understand it. But they don’t, not really. The part about the housing crash seems simple enough. With banks whispering sweet encouragement, people bought homes they couldn’t afford, and now they are falling behind on their mortgages.

But the overwhelming majority of homeowners are doing just fine. So how is it that a mess concentrated in one part of the mortgage business — subprime loans — has frozen the credit markets, sent stock
markets gyrating, caused the collapse of Bear Stearns, left the economy on the brink of the worst recession in a generation and forced the Federal Reserve to take its boldest action since the Depression?

Link


Previous Post
Get Neatorama by RSS or email
 Next Post
Posted on March 25, 2008 at 5:01 am by Alex
Category: Cartoon & Comic, Money & Finance



6 Comments to "The Subprime Mortgage Crisis Explained with Cartoons"

  • Sue Dunham
    March 25th, 2008 at 5:47 am

    Thanks. That explains the feeling I’ve had for some time now. This is fraud by another name, just like the Savings and Loan crisis in the 80s.
    Deregulating these guys was bad the first time, and it was a bad idea again.

  • Not Happy
    March 25th, 2008 at 7:11 am

    Err….dare I say it, these are taken from http://www.fintag.com!

  • bean
    March 25th, 2008 at 10:12 am

    People don’t understand the “mortgage crisis” because it’s about as real as global warming. A handful of rich people and house-flippers bought secondary homes they couldn’t afford, and when the housing market stopped expanding, they lost their shirts. There’s no friggin’ financial crisis, except for the rising cost of energy.

  • oakling
    March 25th, 2008 at 9:57 pm

    thank you! I’ve been working on understanding how my own personal money works for years (through awesome Debtors Anonymous) and i still don’t understand how all the national economic hoo-ha works, or stuff like bonds and bond issues and interest rates… seems like time for me to start studying that stuff!

  • OminousRed
    March 25th, 2008 at 11:27 pm

    ::: To BEAN :::

    This affected more than just rich people. There were a lot of people who were first time buyers that this affected. In my office and circle of friends alone, about 60% of them were affected by this. It wasn’t just people who bought homes, there were people who refinanced too.

    Basically, a lot of people put themselves in debt or ruined their credit.

  • Parker
    March 26th, 2008 at 6:50 am

    I’ve seen these and still don’t think they’re that educational. There’s a lot of background education that’s needed to understand the full scope of things. If I don’t know what a CPO is or the relationship between mortgage lenders and banks (which is shady enough to be confusing on its own) then I won’t know why this can be expanded to cripple a nation’s economy (don’t we have many other things to deal with besides housing?) or how this is as bad as The Great Depression if thousands of people aren’t migrating from factory to factory looking for work. It’d be great if people supplied simple FAQs to be answered by an expert..and a cartoon isn’t necessary. Something in between crappy art and a post-grad economics lecture would be wonderful.

Want your own avatar? Get one for free at Gravatar!


Neatorama Comment Policy
You don't have to register or login to comment, but it's easier if you do so. We don't censor comment based on your point of view but comments that are abusive, use excessive profanity, or contain off-topic links may get edited or deleted. On some posts, it may take up several minutes for you comment to show up.


Stay updated on the comments in this post with Comment RSS