'101 Events that Rocked the World' [in 2007 and 2008]

“January 5 [2007] Ownit Mortgage Solutions, a California based subprime lender, filed for bankruptcy.

“February 5 Mortgage Lenders Network USA, another subprime lender in California, filed for bankruptcy.  Mortgage Lenders was the fifteenth largest subprime lender.

“February 8 HSBC announced it would increase its reserves for loan losses because of exposure to U.S. mortgages.”

Those were the first tremors of a financial earthquake that has shaken our economy to its foundations over the past two years.  At least, they’re the first three entries in “101 Events that Rocked the World—a Timeline of Significant Market Events.” 

Many of the items on this list—compiled by lawyers from Morrison & Foerster—will be familiar to most readers.  But the cumulative effect of seeing them all in one timeline is quite stunning.  It gives a sense of how individual events flowed together (and related to one another) that is much clearer in retrospect than while we were going through them.

Although most (by far) of the listed events were bad, a few positive developments figure in the mix.   The timeline includes three items involving covered bonds, all benign:

• FDIC’s adoption of a covered bond policy statement.

• Treasury’s announcement of a best practices guide for covered bonds.

• JPMorgan Chase’s acquisition of the covered bonds issued by Washington Mutual after the latter institution failed.

The last three events in the timeline include “a loss of 533,000 jobs in the month of November [2008], indicating that the United States was in deep recession.”  Let’s hope the months ahead do not provide too many more events like that for a 2009 timeline.

To read Morrison & Foerster's “101 Events that Rocked the World” on the Mondaq website, click here.