A decade on from the housing crash, new risks are emerging

DURING THE broadcast of the 39th Super Bowl in 2005, there was an advert for mortgages from a firm called Ameriquest. “Don’t judge too quickly,” ran the slogan. “We won’t.” Ameriquest also sponsored the half-time show, where Paul McCartney opened with “Drive My Car”. Two years later and the firm was no more, part of the wider crisis in the mortgage market which prompted a global recession and nearly caused the financial system to collapse.

Eleven years after that, at the 50th Super Bowl, a similar advert appeared for a different lender, Rocket Mortgage. A magician, a cyclist and even a toddler try to use the app to apply for home financing. “Push button, get mortgage,” the slogan read. By the Super Bowl in 2018 Rocket said it was the country’s largest mortgage lender, leading some Americans to wonder whether any lessons had been learned at all from the global crash.

Certainly the regulatory system for banks has been transformed. In the 2000s most financial regulation was “microprudential”, focusing on the soundness of individual banks. Now “macroprudential” regulation is the norm. The idea is to ensure that the financial system as a whole can withstand nasty surprises. “Macropru” is useful in a world of low interest rates. When borrowing is cheap, households can bid up house prices to unsustainable levels. But since...

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